Reckless Driving
by Briony8869
Summary: AU: They say when you hit bottom, you know it, and office drone Castiel Novak most definitely has. That is, until he crashes into a very closeted mechanic!Dean Winchester's life. Hijinks ensue. Dean/Cas, Sam/Jessica, Crowley/being awesome.
1. Chapter 1

The kitchen was disturbingly empty when Castiel Novak came downstairs for his morning coffee and bagel. Usually his wife was there, pouring cereal for their six-year-old daughter and bobbing her head to Christian pop on the radio. Music was her morning ritual to get psyched up for he day. They were past the point in their marriage when she'd kiss him on the cheek when he walked into breakfast, frankly he was lucky to get a nod, but usually she'd put his bagel in next to her cinnamon raisin toast without needing to be asked. Generally he would sit quietly, sipping his coffee while the female members of his family kept up a cheerful conversation about school and television and any other little topic that they could think of.

Today though the kitchen was dim and cold. The tile counter still had the ketchup smudge he had left there from his microwaved dinner the night before, encountered by no being other than himself. He took the bag of bagels from the freezer and unwrapped them miserably, placing the frost bitten thing in the toaster. The coffee machine ran with a low gurgle, filling a whole pot that he wouldn't be able to finish alone.

On the kitchen table sat an unopened off-white envelope, the stationary recognizable from the thank you cards he and his wife had chosen last year. Castiel avoided looking at the offensive thing, but he could feel its presence glaring through the back of his head while the ice crystals melted off of his breakfast.

He had to read it. He was going to read it, obviously. Just not yet.

Last night he had walked into his home at about 9:30 pm, after a pretty dismal and overlong day of work. He hadn't heard the normal background noise of whatever game show Amelia felt like watching that night, stepping into a silent, empty house. There were no rambling, pointless stories told by his sweet blonde daughter. Nothing but cleared out shelves and a very loud envelope.

An envelope that had sat on the table for over 12 hours now, untouched.

The toaster dinged at long last and Castiel's bagel popped up. Unthinkingly he reached to grab it right away and hissed as the too-hot bagel burned his fingers. Amelia had a wooden fork thingie she used to take the damn things out of the toaster but he had no idea where she kept it.

He turned and put his plate on the table, going to get cream cheese and trying not to think about anything but his impending work day.

But the envelope was taking up all of the space on the kitchen table. He couldn't sit and enjoy his breakfast without staring at the damned thing.

Amelia had left it for him, obviously. It probably had explanations in it. He took a crunchy bite of his food, staring darkly at the little piece of folded paper.

Eventually he opened it.

"Castiel." It read. "I've taken Claire to my mother's. I'm sorry that I had to, but you know why. I want a divorce. I'm sorry for everything, and I wish this could work out, but I promise you it's for the best. –Amelia."

Castiel wondered silently at how concise Amelia could be. He imagined Claire sleeping peacefully in her room at her grandmother's, thinking that it was just a nice visit. It was best that way. It might be a little while before he saw her again. He took another bite of his cream cheese bagel.

Work.

Castiel worked as a customer service representative for a fairly large electronics corporation. Every day he would respond to phone calls and emails from people who felt that they had received bad service or bought a faulty product and wanted to shout at someone for it. He would take the call, proceed to be bitched at for however long the customer could handle, apologize for the problem that could not have been his fault, and decide whether the complaint was valid enough to transfer over to somebody who could solve it.

No other representative had lasted for more than three years in his job, and he was going on year eight.

His cubicle was, like most cubicles, dismal. It had that kind of gray, faintly fuzzy texture that made up cubicle walls, brightened here and there by a few pictures of his wife and child. As he sunk down into his chair he found himself staring at his family's Christmas photo from last year. Amelia had been cranky that day, he remembered, if you really looked you could almost make out the irritation in her forced smile.

"Castiel." A smallish man who looked like a well dressed but evil teddy bear peeked over the top of Castiel's cubicle. He was just barely tall enough to look over it though, so he quickly shifted to the entrance to the cubicle where he could pose ominously in all of his black suited glory. Castiel looked over at one of his numerous bosses, an English man named Crowley. His superior's eyebrow raised inquisitively at Castiel's apparent unease. He continued. "A favor."

"Yes?" Castiel said. The last time he had paid a favor to Crowley he had worked harder than he had in his life in order to get a presentation ready on time. He hadn't been able to come home for two days straight, sleeping on a couch in Michael's office for one cramped and anxiety-ridden night. Amelia had been irritated with him for being such a pushover about it, but Crowley had promised him a good bonus, and saints be praised at the end of the week had a few thousand more dollars in his bank account than had previously been there.

"There's a meeting over at Hamilton County today, but I have to deal with something here. Don't worry, all you'll have to do is walk in, nod at everyone, and record the meeting with this thing." Crowley held out a tiny little audio recorder that was no bigger than a pen. "It's quite important that I understand what happens at this meeting, but it's less important than every single other bloody thing I have to deal with today. You can take the company car if you want."

Castiel stared at Crowley for a few moments, blankly; processing what had just been said.

"Yes? Good Morning? Castiel?" Crowley leaned over Castiel's desk ominously. "Wake up mate, you're on duty now."

"I… yes." Castiel nodded matter of factly. "Yes. I can do that."

"Of course you can, a ruddy squirrel could do what I just asked you." Crowley responded snarkily.

"I… of course I will." Castiel said, sitting up slightly more rigid in his chair and flicking his gaze to and from family photographs. "I can head out right away."

"Get a coffee or something first, you're more spacey than usual." Crowley tossed the company car keys in Castiel's general direction dismissively and swept off.

Castiel sighed and knelt to pick up the car keys off of his office floor. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before standing back up. By the time he snatched his overcoat purposefully off its hook you almost couldn't tell how wrecked he was. Almost.

Dean Winchester had had three cups of coffee that morning and had still managed to fall asleep behind the desk of Bobby Singer's Car Care. He was sprawled out in an old torn up pleather chair, head lolled slightly back and drooling just the tiniest of bits. The sight of an unconscious, ridiculously good-looking man had attracted the attention of a group of teenage girls who happened to be skipping school that day. They peered through the glass window, gawking and giggling amongst themselves. One of them had almost worked up enough courage to rap against the glass window when Bobby made a surly entrance, glaring right back at them. The overdressed teens were forced to retreat, casting a few more longing glances back at the hottest mechanic outside of gay porn they had ever seen.

Bobby rolled his eyes at the schoolgirls and smacked his employee across the back of the head.

"CHRIST!" Dean muttered, jerking up in his seat inelegantly and blinking at his surroundings in confusion. Ah yes. He was getting paid right now. He glanced up at his boss somewhat sheepishly. "C'mon Bobby, no one was even here!"

Bobbly glowered pointedly.

"They show up Dean. That's what it's like with customers. They aren't here one second, and then they show up. Life's funny that way."

Before Dean could stutter out a defense for himself their phone rang and he answered it with a flourish, as a means of retreat.

"Bobby's Car Care, Dean speaking, how may I help you?" Dean answered the phone with a great big customer service smile on his face. For once he used the little spiel that Bobby told him he ought to use whenever he answered the phone, as an attempt to earn back some "please don't fire me" points.

Bobby rolled his eyes.

"Oh, where?" Dean asked, smile fading immediately. His brow furrowed and Bobby could tell that it was going to be one of those mornings. "Intersection of Jefferson and Wayne?" Dean grabbed for some paper and began writing addresses down. "Ok. Any injuries?" He scribbled some words down on a notebook and held it up for Bobby to read. It said, "tow job – accident – station wagon and a Subaru". This time when Bobby sighed it was less exasperation and more resignation.

Dean slammed the phone down.

"Doesn't sound too bad, and it's pretty close by. You want me to head over?" Dean asked, looking very businesslike all of a sudden. He had kind of a bad history with car accidents, but somehow that had made him better at dealing with other people's.

"Git on out there. Anybody hurt?" Bobby asked.

Dean sort of shrugged, "Some dude might be concussed but they said nothing too bad." Dean pulled on the first jacket he saw off of the coatrack by the door and opened the entrance with a bang. "See you later!" he called out as he jogged over to the tow truck.

The first thing that Dean saw when he pulled up to the accident was the police re-routing traffic around the two vehicles. The Subaru's right side was smashed to hell, with the windshield shattered. The Honda station wagon looked like it was in pretty good shape; maybe they'd be able to piece it together. Depending of course on who was insured.

On each side of the road there were grassy hills. Clusters of paramedics and cops surrounded two figures hunched over on opposite sides. Police tend to try to keep accident victims away from one another. It minimizes the shouting and fighting that tends to happen after something like this.

Dean didn't try to look too closely at the people hunched over on each side of the road. Watching a person who's just been in a car accident is like meeting somebody who's completely naked while you're fully clothed. They are just utterly and completely vulnerable. He pulled over as close as he could get to where the cars were wrecked and stepped out to go through all the bureaucratic nonsense.

Dean had done this enough times to know that cops had the best grasp of who needed to fill out what form and give it to whom. But before he could sort out who was in charge, he heard a female voice call out to him.

"DEAN WINCHESTER!" The voice yelled, and there was a hysterical edge to it.

"What the…" Dean looked over to see, of all people, Ellen Harvelle, seated on the grassy side of the road. She was wearing a blanket and was surrounded by a group of flustered paramedics who were trying to get her to stop waving frantically.

"Dean Winchester if you charge me one fucking CENT for towing that car I'm going over to Bobby's and popping his head off like a dandelion." Ellen shouted.

"Hold on, sorry…" Dean extricated himself from a police officer who had started trying to speak with him, "I… I know her!" Dean explained.

He dodged across the road in a way that was probably unsafe and jogged over to where his good friend and favorite bartender had finally been restrained by the medical team.

"Ellen! Are you ok? What happened?" Dean asked, crouching next to Ellen protectively. He hovered awkwardly for a moment deciding whether to hug her or not, and ended up choosing to awkwardly pat her shoulder. His little brother Sam would have been better in this situation in all honestly.

"We need to move to a bigger town huh? You've definitely been someplace too long when you know the guy towing your car after a crash." Ellen spoke with a shaky smile, and for all her sass her eyes looked like they were pretty close to spilling over with tears at any second.

"You ok?" He repeated.

"I'm fine, that guy over there just turned in front of me out of nowhere." She pointed a shaky finger over at the man at the other side of the road. He was sitting on the grassy hill, with his head between his knees and his hands behind his neck, perfectly still. Dean stretched to get a look at him. The guy who'd smashed into Ellen was youngish, mid thirties maybe, with a messy shock of brown hair. He was dressed like an office schlub with a tan overcoat that had some bloodstains visible on it's shoulder.

Some cops were standing around him awkwardly trying to balance the needs of a man having a nervous breakdown with their own need to get this paperwork sorted out as fast as possible.

"He looks like a dick." Dean noted. Ellen didn't respond, distracted by the cops around her that had finally got her attention back. Every single one of them needed her to repeat her name and date of birth apparently, before justice could be served. Dean glanced over at the two dented up vehicles in the middle of the road, remembering his primary reason for being here was to remove them. As he started to walk over to his tow truck he called out over his shoulder, "You called Jo yet?"

"No, Dean sweetie, could you?" Ellen asked from around an ambulance person, "I'm still kinda shook up and I don't want to scare her."

"I… uh… sure?" He committed half-heartedly.

"And don't you dare charge me." She growled.

"Ellen babe, for you?" Dean grinned charmingly and jogged back over to his tow truck. Various public officers surrounded him. Unlike Ellen though, Dean had gone through this song and dance before. He was signing forms and hooking up cars and assessing damage in as quick and professional a manner as he was capable. Poor Ellen. He knew she didn't have the greatest insurance. He looked over at the dick who had hit her.

The man was still sitting there at the side of the road, rubbing his forehead and staring down at the ground. It looked like he was finally starting to talk to the cops and paramedics around him, so he couldn't be too hurt. Once Dean had both cars hooked up to the back of his truck safely he jogged over to where the guy was sitting, pulling a card out of his pocket.

"Hey, sir? You need anything out of your car before we tow it?" Dean asked. It wasn't necessarily his job to do this but he wanted to get a closer look at the guy.

"What?" The man sitting on the ground looked up at Dean, eyebrows knit in worry. His face was covered in blood, apparently his airbag had socked him in the face and given him a nosebleed. He was absently playing with a wedding ring on his left hand.

Something about the drying blood smeared all over the guy's face really brought out the crisp blue clearness of his eyes. Which was a weird thing to notice honestly. Dean pulled himself together.

"Your car, do you need anything out of it? Wallet? Suitcase? Purse?" Dean joked, realizing as he said it that perhaps this was not the moment for levity.

"It's not, not my car it's… It's my boss… it's the company's…" The sorry little businessman trailed off, rubbing his forehead anxiously, like he was just too overwhelmed to deal with this. The man had a deep voice, raspy and shaky, although the waver may have just been a side affect of almost dying. Before Dean could point out that his question had not exactly been answered, he noticed the guy's wallet and briefcase were lying in the grass next to him. He put on a smile that was almost trying to be comforting.

"You know what, we can get all that sorted out later. You got your phone and stuff though?"

"Yes, yes all of my personal belongings are with me." The man sighed. He looked over at Ellen, who had finally allowed the paramedics to put her in a neck brace and was griping about it loudly. "Is she hurt?" He asked, looking up at Dean with wide, anxious eyes and raising a shaky hand to indicate the woman on the other side of the street.

"Ellen?" Dean asked, looking across the road. He shrugged. "She seemed ok. Scared a little."

"You know her?" The man's voice perked up in sudden interest. "The woman I hit?"

"Yeah, she's a great lady." Dean said, not sure what to think of this douchebag. _Maybe you should look both ways next time so you don't almost kill any more of my friends. _

"I'll pay for everything, her car, the hospital… it was my fault, my fault completely." The man spoke quickly and earnestly. In all likelihood he was in shock or concussed or something, but he looked very determined. He grabbed his wallet and started flipping through it, pulling out a business card. "Here, give her this, this is my information, will you tell her I'll pay for everything?"

"Sure man, I'll tell her." Dean looked at the business card. "Castiel Novak" it read in cheap little letters on a flimsy backing. "Customer Service." There was a little watermark at the bottom so you could tell it was from one of those websites that send you free cards. Dean looked over at the cops, who seemed very interested in the man taking all of the blame for the accident. He handed Novak his own information. "Um, here's my card. I mean, it's the card for the Car Care. Where your car will be. So you can pick it up."

"Oh." Novak looked at the little piece of paper, expression falling again. Dean didn't blame him. The guy crashed a car that wasn't his? He was about to be buried under eight miles of paperwork. "I guess I'll call tomorrow." He said, glumly.

"Hey." Dean sort of patted the guy's shoulder, setting his face into an expression that might be mistaken for comforting. "You never know man, I'll see what I can do. Maybe it won't be so bad. I've fixed up worse than this."

Castiel looked up, and Dean was actually stunned by his expression of utter and complete misery.

"Thank you." Castiel looked down quickly at the card in his hand. "Dean. But I doubt it."

It wasn't until around 4:30 that Dean remembered he was supposed to call Jo and tell her what had happened. It had been a long day; he'd been hauling his ass around the workshop non-stop since lunch. Elbow deep in engine grease on a 1998 Honda Accord, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket.

"Shit." He muttered, dragging himself out from below the station wagon and fumbling for his super out of date flip phone. His caller ID read "SAMMY"

"Sam!" He said, answering the phone cheerfully. "What's up bro?"

"Ellen called. She said she had a message for you." Sam said.

"What?" Dean asked, wiping some sweat off his forehead and leaving a streak of grease.

"Wait, I've got to remember her exact phrasing. I'm pretty sure it was 'YOU'RE A DUMBASS'." Sam said, audibly smiling.

"Sounds like her." Dean admitted, crossing his arms and leaning against Bobby's ancient and broken soda machine. "She pissed I forgot to call Jo?"

"I just got a call from Jessica who said that Jo was freaking out because her mom was in a car accident and nobody told her so then I called Ellen who told me to tell you that…"

"God you biddie hens are annoying." Dean muttered as Sam rambled on.

"Anyway you're a dumbass. Call Jo. Aren't you guys dating or something?"

"BIDDIE HENS." Dean repeated pointedly. "ANNOYING."

"Whatever man" Sam was laughing though, good that Ellen's near death experience gave him such amusement. "You gonna be home for dinner tonight? Because I was going to make Jessica some salmon and I know you don't really like fish."

"The fact that you refer to sex as salmon tells me you're not ready." Dean teased.

"Ugh. Dean." Sam sighed over the phone and Dean just knew that he was rolling his eyes. "Just don't come home tonight ok?"

"Understood little bro." Dean said. "See you." He snapped his phone shut and looked up at the clock. He was still supposed to be working for 20 more minutes before he could shut the place down. The still unfinished Honda Accord stared at him accusingly from the center of the messy garage. "Shut up, dude. " Dean told it, and started the process of closing up.

Castiel Novak stepped into the dark foyer of his home. Amelia had an expensive habit of forgetting to turn off the lights, even after Castiel had explained to her that their power bill was monstrous and that she single handedly was destroying the planet. Walking into a pitch-dark home for the first time, though, Castiel began to see the advantage of a little bit of surplus energy usage.

He flicked a switch and put down his briefcase with a groan. His neck and back were still sore from where he'd stiffened up in the accident. One of the little plastic wristbands they put on you in the hospital was still around his wrist. He could still smell the burnt rubber and gasoline on his clothes. After a few hours of tests to make sure he wasn't concussed and had no internal bleeding his doctor had handed him a terrifying stack of papers, told him to stop by the police station so that the cop could hand him his ticket, and to get a nice night's sleep.

Crowley had sent him a text message while he was lying in a neck brace in an ambulance. "Great job Novak, didn't even make it on to the interstate. Come see me when you've stopped crying."

He rubbed his bruised arm uncomfortably, leaning against the doorframe. His bed was upstairs, unmade since he hadn't made it that morning, cold, and unwelcoming. The computer in his study was probably still on, Castiel hadn't been near it since he'd first seen the foreboding envelope on the kitchen table yesterday. He could send people emails, letting them know what happened. Get a start on the red tape. But instead of walking into his study and taking care of some badly needed internet correspondence, Castiel dragged his feet into the living room, slumped onto his cheap pleather couch, flipped on the television, and started watching a procedural crime drama.

In his study his computer remained on, browser history opened where his wife had left it.

Meanwhile, Dean Winchester sat at the corner stool of The ABC Taproom, behind a somewhat embarrassingly tall beer. He hadn't realized when he'd asked for the Yuengling on tap that it would come in a vessel that could comfortably hold a bouquet of flowers. A basketball game was clearly visible on a mounted TV behind the bar, so all the alcoholics could distract themselves from how depressing drinking alone was.

Dean found himself enthralled in a friggin' Celtics game, sipping away at his awkwardly huge beer. When his phone beeped he picked it up conspicuously, eyeing the other creepy bastards around him to make sure they all saw his social interaction. He might be drinking alone at 6:30pm, but he wasn't one of them yet damn it. He wasn't a regular.

It was a text from Jo. "I'm staying in with mom tonight, duh."

Dean pursed his lips, then promptly unpursed them when he realized what he was doing in a public place.

"Laaaaame." He wrote, but before he pressed "send" a memory struck him from that afternoon. Man, he was just totally incompetent today. He quickly erased his typed whiny response and wrote "The dude who hit yr mom says he'll pay for everything, I got his card."

The next response came much more quickly than the previous one.

"Send me that shit. And if you need to tell Sam that you and I hung out go ahead ;)"

The winky face mocked Dean as he read and re-read the text. He looked around the bar at the men who were beginning to fill it up. The ABC Taproom was filled with all the usual wood paneling and random bad wildlife paintings that usually signified your everyday dive bar. And from time to time straight dudes did mistakenly stumble in, fooled by the dingy atmosphere and sport television into thinking this was a place where they could enjoy a drink in a heteronormative locale.

They'd be wrong though.

A youngish man with dark hair and very pale skin took a seat at the bar just a few seats down from where Dean was enjoying his beverage. He stretched, showing off some pretty nicely toned arms, and then gave Dean a small but impossible to ignore smile. Dean tapped the side of his beer glass nervously and ran his eyes up and down the newcomer. He was wearing well fitting jeans, a striped button down shirt that was only partially buttoned, and thin suspenders. Celtics game forgotten, Dean took a deep breath and gave the handsome guy an upwards nod and a raised eyebrow. That was all it took. The nicely proportioned young man slid off of his seat and made his way over to the stool directly next to Dean.

"That's some beer." The young guy observed, sticking his hands in his pockets and posing attractively. "Looks like I have some catching up to do." Dean took a long swig from his friggin' chalice, just starting to feel the first tingle of tipsy enthusiasm.

"What'll you have?" He asked.

"I dunno." The guy said, biting his bottom lip and smiling like he was posing for an underwear ad. "Surprise me."

And it didn't look like Dean would need a place to stay that night after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel approached Bobby's Car Care cautiously. There appeared to be two or three different entrances to the place, all of which covered with dingy grime and none with a sign that said "Entrance." He normally just took his car to Autozone for this reason. Autozone made sense. He peered through a window to see if he could make out a desk or something where there would be someone he could talk to.

Through the glass window Castiel could make out a gloomy little office that looked like it hadn't gotten new furniture, or for that matter been swept, since 1974. Inexplicably there was a display stand with a bunch of hunting and fishing magazines on it. The whole place reeked of testosterone.

Behind the desk sat the same young man who had spoken to him yesterday, lying with his head on his arm and apparently catching a few winks. Probably this was the correct place.

"Excuse me?" Castiel said softly, pushing delicately on the door to the car care. Jingle bells that Castiel hadn't seen hanging from the doorway loudly destroyed his unobtrusive entrance. The handsome fellow behind the counter snapped to embarrassed attention.

"HEY! What?" Dean asked, wiping a smear of drool off the side of his face. "Yeah!"

Dean blearily registered that he was being addressed by an unshaved man wearing a tan overcoat, standing apologetically in the doorway. Better than looking up to find Bobby anyway.

"Hello. My name is Castiel Novak." The man said, walking across the office and extending his hand. "I was in an automobile accident yesterday." He paused for a second, and then added, "You were there."

Castiel looked pretty haggard, his skin was pale and waxy looking and there were dark circles under his eyes. Still, considering the fact that the last time Dean had seen him his face had been covered with blood, he looked ok.

"Oh yeah! Yeah, I remember." Dean said standing up and shaking the dude's hand. "Here, lets see what I got for you." He turned and started to dig through the stacks of paper on his desk to find what he needed for the accident yesterday.

Last night had been super awkward, the guy he'd ended up going home with (who's name was Louis though Dean didn't remember that little detail) had ended up being something of a handful. He was hot as all fucking get out, no mistake, but he'd wanted to spend the whole post coital segment of the evening talking about politics. Dean had a lot of respect for people who cared about politics, but he didn't really keep up with any news beyond the sports page. He hadn't recognized any of the names that his companion was bandying around like they were old friends, and apart from picking up a vague feeling of justified indignation he had been entirely unable to follow the conversation. From the somewhat awkward breakfast they had shared Dean gathered that he hadn't done too good a job hiding his ignorance either.

Sam had called him while he was trying to think of something to say while eating some whole-wheat toast. He'd said that it was cool for him to come home, which was one of those thoughtful and utterly unnecessary phone calls that just made Dean's life that much more hectic. He'd tried to speak calmly and normally whilst shutting his attractive companion the hell up so Sam wouldn't be able to pick out a male voice over the phone. Nosey-ass baby brother. Why was he always such a fucking busybody?

After a couple seconds of digging through haphazardly filed stacks of papers Dean paused.

"Wait, I don't have to give you papers, you have to give me papers." He looked up at the gentleman standing on the other side of his counter. "Y'all got insurance?"

The man looked at Dean nervously.

"Apparently the car is insured, however I'm not exactly sure which of these you need. The police officers gave me several forms to fill out yesterday."

Castiel reached into his briefcase and pulled out a half-inch thick stack of papers, all of various sizes and shapes to make them as inconvenient to lug around as possible. Dean gave a low whistle.

"You got served, huh?" He looked up at Cas with a sympathetic smile.

Castiel's face stayed very serious, although his head tilted slightly to the left. He kept doing that. Like an owl or something.

"I'm just happy no-one was seriously hurt." He responded earnestly.

"Oh dude, yeah, totally." Dean hastily pointed out. "I talked to Ellen yesterday, apparently her neck's gonna be sore for a few days but other than that she's fine."

"I'm so pleased to hear that." Castiel sighed, and it looked as though some of the tension that was built up in his shoulders drained out. "It was a strange coincidence that you knew her."

"Yeah, man, the guy who owns this place? Bobby? He used to date her!" Dean pointed out with a wicked grin, like he was sharing a deep dark secret. He and Sam had flipped shit when they found that out. It was simultaneously fascinating and totally gross. "You're lucky we didn't like, key your car or something!"

"I would very much appreciate you not doing that." Castiel said, quickly and seriously. "It is a company car."

"Um, ok." Dean said, not sure how to respond to that. Met with Castiel's expression of utter seriousness he was forced to promise, "I won't."

"Thank you." Cas said, with another relieved expression. Then he was all business as he began to dig through the huge stack of papers again. Dean couldn't help but feel kind of sorry for the guy, he clearly had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

"Ok, what car insurance does your company have?" Dean rolled up his sleeves for some heavy bureaucratic nonsense. This wasn't his first time to the "I crashed somebody else's car" party.

About 40 minutes later Castiel was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to some Newsweeks from 1992, watching Dean speak on the phone with yet another insurance representative.

"Yeah I get that man, but see, it says here," Dean held up one of the many sheets of paper strewn across the desk, "That your company covers towing costs AND parking fees." The young man made eye contact with Castiel and gave him a wink. The comfortable gesture took Cas by surprise. Despite himself he felt his cheeks flush. Dean was acting as though they were friends already. It was almost unprofessional. He was fairly certain that the tone he was using on the phone with the insurance people was quite unprofessional as well, although it certainly seemed to be working out for him.

Castiel's cell phone buzzed, and he saw with some horror that it was Crowley.

"Hello?" He answered, standing up and trying to quietly get out of earshot from where Dean was talking loudly and enthusiastically with yet another insurance agent. The jingly door made that impossible though, so he exited with more a crash than a whisper.

"Novak, I'm staring at your cubicle right now, and guess what? You aren't in it." Crowley had a way of using his clipped British accent as a kind of weapon of intimidation.

"I… I'm getting everything taken care of." Castiel said. "I'm at the Car Care."

"Tell me Novak." Crowley's voice was soft and terrifying. "Did I hire you to work in a Car Care?"

"Um…"

"Answer the question."

"I… I think the answer is fairly obvious."

"IS IT THOUGH!? BECAUSE WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?" Crowley erupted.

"I'm at the Car Care." Castiel repeated dully.

"GET TO FUCKING WORK, NOVAK."

And with that Crowley hung up the phone. Castiel stared at his phone anxiously for a minute before turning around to walk back inside. He stopped at the sight of Dean, leaning against the doorframe of the office, eyebrows raised and arms crossed.

"Holy crap, Cas, was that your boss?" He asked.

"Um, one of them." Castiel sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and shuffling his feet.

"I could hear him from friggin' here!" Dean said, looking concerned.

"He um." Castiel looked up at Dean with an apologetic shrug. "He projects."

"I'm sorry dude." Dean said, and for a couple of seconds the two of them just stood there, sizing the other up. Dean was the first to continue, "Well, on the bright side it looks like your insurance all came through, and I'll have the car all fixed up and ready for you in about a week."

"Really?" Castiel's head tilted like he was trying to understand a foreign language. "You can fix it?"

Dean sort of smirked. "It looked a lot worse than it was, you just need some new wiring and some dents patched up."

"Thank you." Castiel said, with a nod. "For everything." Without changing his expression from blank and serious he continued, "Can I leave?"

"Um, yeah dude." Dean said. "You can leave."

Castiel nodded again and swept off purposefully. Dean watched him walk away across their little parking lot for a second before turning around to go back inside. He had just gotten settled at his desk when the door flew open with a loud crash of jingle bells, and Dean looked up to see Castiel staring at him pointedly. How the fuck had he got there so fast?

"Did you give my information to the woman I hit? Ellen?" Castiel asked. "Because I still fully intend to pay for all of her medical costs."

"Um, I sort of forgot, but I'm seeing her daughter tonight so I'll give your card to her then. " Dean admitted. "You sure dude? I mean, it's nice of you and all, but…"

"I'm perfectly sure. It was my fault she was hurt." Castiel stared at Dean silently for a few seconds longer than was generally considered socially acceptable.

"I'll uh, I'll give her your card I guess." Dean promised, feeling his cheeks flush and hating himself for it.

"Here, I'll give you another one." Castiel pulled another card out of his wallet and handed it to Dean.

Dean watched through the window as Castiel Novak walked with his strange gait over to his car and slid bashfully inside. Running off to kiss some jerk's ass at his job, probably. Something about the way Cas had just stood there and taken it while he was being bitched out for no reason reminded Dean of the last time he'd spoken to his father. It was years ago now, but he could still remember the anger in his dad's voice over the phone. He had been pissed that Dean had let Sam go to a party with booze at it. Dean hadn't stood up for himself; he'd just tensed his shoulders and said "yes sir" and "no sir" like always. The next day a semi-truck had slammed full speed into John Winchester's car, killing him instantly.

Dean shook his head with a shiver. It had been a while since he'd let himself think about that. He watched as Castiel Novak took like 10 minutes to pull out of their parking lot because he was being so over-cautious. Weird dude.

As soon as Castiel sat down at his desk he got to work. He had a bunch of calls lined up that he needed to return, some to some very pissed off people who had now been waiting several days to get a call from the customer service representative. He had at it with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, but everyone he spoke to today seemed to have it in for him. There's nothing easier than to shout at a faceless voice over the telephone that you feel has wronged you in some way. Castiel took several verbal poundings before an imposing shadow over his tiny desk informed him he was not alone.

"Raphael." Castiel said, putting the middle aged woman whose television had come without a remote on hold for a second. "Do you need something?"

Raphael stared at Castiel with a sort of terrifying cool intensity. Castiel wasn't very good at picking up on other people's signals though, so he met it with his own slightly off centered puppy stare that he gave everyone, particularly when he was nervous.

"Just making sure you're all right." Raphael said, although his expression looked more like he was trying to decide whether he ought to gouge Castiel's eyes out or just rip is face off.

"I'm fine." Castiel said, if he was going to respond honestly he'd say that he was bruised up, stiff, sore, and in a state of mental breakdown, but he didn't want to make a big deal of things.

"Crowley tells me you've been a bit erratic these past few days." Raphael said.

"Did he?" Castiel asked, not sure whether to deny or confirm. Instead he sort of raised his hands in a "I dunno" kind of gesture which didn't really make any sense in the given context.

"You're going to be busy for the next few days." Raphael said, seriously. "One of our clock radios was recalled for an electric fault. People have been getting shocked."

"Ah." Castiel sighed. People who have just recently been physically injured by one of their devices were absolutely the worst people to have to deal with.

"You're the most experienced rep we have. We need you to actually do your job here." Raphael said. It was almost an encouraging statement. Almost.

"I'll do my best." Castiel said.

Raphael stepped away from the cubicle, and Castiel pressed the hold button on his phone again.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry for the wait…"

"FINALLY." A woman's irritated voice greeted him in the least courteous way possible. Castiel sighed. 5 hours until he could go.

When Jo Harvelle climbed down the stairs from her apartment above the Roadhouse bar, trying to tie an apron with one hand, she was a good 20 minutes late for her shift. She was banking on her mother not noticing, as in all likelihood she was in the process of explaining her car accident to her 80th concerned customer. Sure enough, the first thing that Jo saw when she opened the door to the bar was her mother, standing at the center of a concerned huddle leather-clad biker dudes who were all fussing over her well being.

The next thing she saw was much more interesting though, she was standing directly behind the unmistakable backside of Dean friggin' Winchester, who was leaning against the bar and pretending (badly) to pay attention to Ellen's story. This angle presented quite a few possibilities. After some very quick weighing of options, Jo decided that the absolute best thing to do in this situation would be to snap her hair tie on Dean's perky, perky ass.

"FUCK!" Dean yelped, turning around with a jerk. He rolled his eyes when he saw his attacker. "Damn it Jo! I was gonna punch you in the face." He explained, holding his wounded posterior.

"You can't. I'm a girl. That's just how it works." Jo smirked and took her position behind the grimy bar counter where she'd worked since WAY before it was legal for her to do so. "So, what are you having?"

"Um, nothing from somebody who just sexually harassed me." Dean muttered.

"Dude, from all the times you've called me 'sweetie', you're lucky I don't spit in all your drinks." Jo retorted, checking whether or not she needed to slice some more limes or lemons. She didn't. They didn't exactly serve the sort of customers who demanded citrus in their beverages.

"I'll have a beer, thanks." Dean requested. Jo smiled and went to get him a bottle of IPA. When she turned around less than three seconds later Dean was no longer sitting alone. A woman in her thirties, face lined by smoking but with that slim figure that smokers maintain until they keel over prematurely, was right up in Dean's personal space.

"One of those bikes outside yours, hon?" The woman asked, voice somewhere between Demi Moore's sexy rasp and Mrs. Krabappel from the Simpsons.

"No ma'am." Dean said with a proud little smile, eying his companion up and down. "Mine's the Impala."

Jo watched this exchange with some interest, keeping Dean's beer in her hands for a few more seconds. As far as looks went there was no reason that Dean would not have sex with this woman. She might reek of smoke but he'd gone home with WAY worse. She also totally had that brunette thing that Dean seemed to have such a hard-on for. Depending on her knowledge of cars this lady might just be a home run. It was only 6:00 pm, making this Dean's new pick-up record.

"Oh, the big black thing?" Dean's new friend looked a little disappointed. "Thought you might be a biker."

Aaaand nope. Jo watched as Dean's body language folded away from the woman next to him. Nobody was getting up in Dean's business that spoke ill of his baby. Smoker lady didn't seem to be picking up on any signals though, and in fact had slid a little bit closer to her target.

"You come here often?" She said, resorting to a tried and true bar conversation starter, and from the looks of it her hand had come to rest on Dean's thigh. It was time for Jo to spring into action.

"Got your beer babe." Jo announced, loudly clinking it down in front of the young mechanic. She then leaned over the bar, reached her arm around the back of Dean's head and pulled him in for a lingering if slightly uncomfortable kiss. When she pulled back she saw that Dean's confused expression was only matched by his new friend's irritated one.

"Can I help you with anything ma'am?" Jo asked innocently, putting a coaster under Dean's beer and making eye contact with the brunette.

"You got a handsome boyfriend." The woman said with a resigned sigh. She removed her hand from Dean's thigh and settled back into her own stool.

"Sure do." Jo grinned. "Can't help you there, but I can get you a beverage."

"Jack and Coke." The woman asked, and sat glumly while Jo mixed it with a flourish. When she took her drink she gave both Dean and Jo a businesslike nod and then switched seats, to where new and slightly less attractive men might be approached.

"Whoa, way to save the day Jo. You're the best fake girlfriend ever!" Dean said with a smile.

"Thanks!" Jo said with a smile. Her expression turned thoughtful for a moment though. "You know, I'm a much better fake girlfriend than I am a real one." She shrugged. "Does Sam still think we're dating?"

"I never told him, he thinks he's being clever and figured it out." Dean said with a smirk. "Good old Sam."

"You should tell him the truth." Jo said, and she could actually feel herself turning into her mother as she did so.

"About what?" Dean asked, peeling the label off of his beer and failing to make eye contact with her.

"C'mon Dean. I can't be your fake girlfriend forever." Jo leaned forward and softened her tone. "You're going to have to tell Sam that you like dudes sometime."

Dean flinched and shook his head.

"Don't put it like that, I like chicks too."

"Yes, but the fact that you like dudes as well might be considered significant by somebody like, I don't know, your brother."

"Not yet, ok?" Dean looked up at Jo with one of his tough guy expressions. "I'll do it, just not yet."

"Fine." Jo sighed in resignation and leaned back, making a quick check of if anybody needed a drink. From the surly expression she was getting from a number of bikers and truckers, it looked like some people did. "Until then," She said as she started to drift towards her customers, "if your Disney-princess ass needs rescuing just give me a call."

"Will do." Dean sighed, taking another swig of his beer. Jo skipped off to help people. "Will friggin' do."

Dean almost forgot after his fifth beer that he had actually come to the roadhouse with a purpose. Before he left he swaggered over to Ellen, who was still being coddled by all of her adoring fans and customers, and pulled out a sad little business card.

"Hey, this is the guy." Dean said. "The guy that hit you. He says he's gonna pay for all your shit."

Ellen took the card out of Dean's hand with a hopeful expression. "Really?" She asked. "It's just, I can really only afford good health insurance for Jo…"

"He's says it's on him, he'll cover it. He's not that big of a dick actually, once you talk to him." Dean said.

"If he pays for my health care I'll fucking marry him." Ellen said, and the guys around her all cracked up. Dean smiled and made his exit, heading home to the apartment he shared with his kid brother, alone.

"Hey sweetie." Castiel said over the phone to his little girl, the first time they'd spoken in several days. "How are you doing?"

"I'm good!" Claire said, simply.

"What have you and grandma been up to?" He asked.

"Grandma bought me pudding." Claire said. "And I told her I wanted worms in it!" She giggled. Claire was six and hadn't exactly grasped the concept of story-telling just yet, although she tried really hard.

"Oh." Castiel said, pausing. "Well that sounds disgusting." He responded, perfectly seriously.

"GUMMY WORMS!" Claire clarified.

"Oh! That makes more sense." Castiel nodded approvingly. There was some background noise, it sounded like maybe Claire had put the phone down. "Claire?" He asked, "Claire, you there?" He could hear the unmistakable whisper of Amelia, telling her daughter to pick up the phone.

"NO!" He heard her pout, and it was definitely Claire's tired voice. If they were in a grocery store or something and she'd used that tone he'd take her home right away, whether or not she wanted to stay out.

"Um, Castiel? Claire's being a little tricky tonight." Amelia said, her tone very cool.

"It's all right." Castiel said. "She doesn't know."

For a moment there was an awkward silence.

"Um, mom says she doesn't mind me staying here for a few more days but Claire's going to figure out something's up pretty soon. And the school bus doesn't pick her up here so I've had to drive her…"

"Amelia, I'm so sorry." Castiel said.

"Not now Castiel." Amelia's tone was harsh. "I just…" He could imagine the face she was making, she always got sort of flushed when she was irritated about something. "I know that it's technically your house…" she continued.

Castiel paused for a moment when he realized what was being asked of him.

"I'll stay in a hotel. Or in my office or something. You two can come home whenever you want." He stared at the linoleum floor of their kitchen. It really was pretty cheap and ugly once you looked at the details.

"Darn it, Castiel, I knew you were going to be like this." Amelia said, voice soft and shaky.

"What? Like what?" Castiel asked, worriedly.

"So… reasonable." Amelia laughed, sadly. "You should try being a jerk sometime, it would make this easier."

"I…" Castiel wasn't sure the best way to respond to that. "I'm sorry?"

"JESUS CHRIST YOU'RE APOLOGIZING FOR NOT BEING A JERK." Amelia hissed. "Just call me a 'bitch' or something. So my friends won't look at me like I'm the worst person in the world for doing this to you."

"I can't." Castiel responded honestly. "I'm the bad person."

"You… I can't handle this right now. We're going out to eat. Claire's cranky cause she's hungry." And with that Castiel heard the click of Amelia hanging up the phone.

Castiel sat very still for a few minutes, eventually just leaning forward and resting his forehead against the coolness of his kitchen counter.

After a few minutes of quiet self-loathing Castiel stood up and made his way into the study. The computer sat there, asleep but not off. He stared at it like an old enemy.

Finally he crossed the floor and pressed the keyboard. The screen flickered to life, and it wasn't pretty. He was looking at the kind of website that had "grow your penis today!" ads on the sidebars and low resolution videos of amateur couples having sex with each other. How had he not cleared his browsing history? What had he done that had made Amelia search it? He rubbed his forehead.

A multitude of sexual issues had plagued the Novak marriage. At first both of them tried to pretend it wasn't a problem, but finally Amelia had insisted they see somebody about it. That had just made him more anxious, which didn't exactly, uh, help.

Castiel couldn't talk about the problem with their marriage because he knew exactly what the problem was. His problem was that as much as he loved and respected his wife, she was a female, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that that was not the genitalia in which he was interested.

It had surprised him as much as anybody else, but once he figured it out he had just totally panicked. He refused to talk about sex, he told his wife that she was being strange for being so frustrated, and locked himself in his study at night to watch videos of men touching each other.

Amelia wasn't stupid.

Castiel finally logged out of all the pages with a sigh. He turned to go to bed, safe in the knowledge that every single thing that was wrong in his life was his own fucking fault.


	3. Chapter 3

Jo had wanted to go to the new bar Alligator Lounge ever since it opened, and had been bugging Dean about it for literally months. He'd put it off and put it off, gently suggesting that perhaps she should go on her own, if she wanted to go drink with a bunch of douchebags that much.

"Dean." Jo had responded over the phone while she posed in a sparkly top in front of her mirror. "It doesn't work that way for girls. I go by myself have to deal with middle aged creepers grabbing my ass because they think I'm a prostitute."

"Don't you have any female friends you can go with?" Dean asked, laughing into his cell phone as he walked home from Bobby's.

"Psh, you are my female friends. COME TO THE ALLIGATOR LOUNGE WITH ME. WE WILL BE THE CUTEST."

And so Dean found himself standing in the Alligator Lounge, amidst a cloud of smoke from a friggin' smoke machine, illuminated by douchey purple glowy lights on the underside of all the tables.

"Sooo… it looked cooler in the ads." Jo whispered as they attempted to make their presence known to the scantily clad and tired looking bartenders. It was tough to get anyone's attention amidst the swarm of frat boys and bachelorette parties.

Jo smiled up at Dean apologetically and he had to admit she looked pretty cute. For once in her life Jo had worn some make-up, and with her black and white polka dot dress she looked like something out of a 1920s cartoon. In the best possible way of course. Dean was, for a second, reminded of why he'd tried so hard to get into Jo's pants when they first met. Of course, after it had happened, they'd both realized that they were much better as bros and their relationship had adjusted accordingly.

Dean himself had done what he always did before going out: put on a flannel shirt and gelled his hair. His male-model face did most of the work for him.

"I will forgive you once I'm too wasted to hear this shitty music." Dean muttered. "Until then, dead to me."

"Understandable." Jo acquiesced.

From across the bar there was an eruption of too loud male laughter. A bunch of older guys in business suits were swarming that corner, obviously looking for trouble. Office party or some shit, Dean figured. Those guys always tried to pretend they were still in college and hadn't sold out to the system yet.

"ONE MORE ROUND! CASTIEL NEEDS MORE WHISKY!" An obnoxiously loud blonde man shouted, standing up from their crowded table.

Dean looked up with interest at that. How many people named Castiel could there possibly be? But before he could figure out if the weird car crash guy was actually in the bar with them he felt someone tap his shoulder. Standing next to him was a cute girl decked out in a pink feather boa and with a pissy expression on her face. She wore a tight fitting tank top that had been bedazzled with rhinestones. The word "BRIDESMAID" was written across her forehead in purple sharpie. It didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what she was doing here.

"Hey, you want a shot?" She growled. "I got a whole tray of purple nurples but they're totally gross so we're trying to get rid of them."

"Really?" Dean asked, "Sweet! Can I have four?"

"Seriously?" The girl asked, but Dean was too busy picking shots up off the tray and waving to get Jo's attention.

"Jo! Free booze!" He called out, grabbing a shot in each hand.

"Score!" Jo said with a laugh, picking up a couple more of the unnaturally purple colored shots. The bridesmaid gave them a look of judgment and then wandered over to the rest of her group, who collectively looked like a fairy princess had sneezed them out, or a four year old had played dress up with all of them.

Dean and Jo pounded their purple nurples, which tasted like a mixture of cough syrup and bad decisions.

After finally managing to wrangle his jack and coke from a bartender who would have been attractive in slightly less eye makeup, Dean was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy. Enough so that he didn't notice when an older guy in a suit pretty much knocked Jo over to get to the bar. At least, not until she responded.

"Whoa, dick, watch it!" Jo said, turning around with a glare. A sheen of sweat across her forehead and rosy cheeks showed that the nurples were starting to hit her as well.

The gray haired guy gave Jo a bitchface x 1000.

"Cool it sweetie, you'll hurt yourself." He sneered.

Jo glared at him for a second, flustered and pissed off. Dean walked over with every intention of confronting that dickweed, but the guy's suit reminded him of what he'd heard earlier. He changed tactics suddenly.

"Wait, do you know Castiel?" Dean asked, out of the blue.

The guy in the suit looked quizzically at Dean for a moment. Jo's face was one big WTF.

"Castiel Novak?" The way the dude said the name it sounded like he meant it as an insult. "He's back there." The dude jerked his head over to the loud corner of the bar, where Dean could make out what appeared to be a very drunk Castiel Novak surrounded by a school of douchebags.

"Zachariah!" a short man in a black suit stood up, dragging himself out of the mire of quite unofficelike revelry. In a slightly slurred English accent he called out, "Are you buying another round or are you trying to trick that girl into having sex with you?"

"Fuck off, Crowley." The gray haired man next to Jo and dean snorted. Adjusting his tie, he turned around and tried to flag down an overworked barkeep.

"Jo!" Dean tapped his friend's shoulder. He gestured over at the corner table, where Castiel was swaying slightly. "That's the guy who hit your mom!" Dean said.

"What?" Zachariah turned around, suddenly interested. "Are you talking about Castiel?"

"Go away." Jo pushed the guy dismissively. She was past tipsy at this point and had hit drunk pretty hard. The scotch in her hand wasn't helping things either. "That's the guy!?" She grabbed the front of Dean's shirt and pointed over at Castiel's table. Dean looked again just to make sure, and yes, the disheveled businessman looked even more disheveled and his cheeks were flushed pink. He nodded,

"That's the dude!"

Jo sort of giggled in a way she never would had all of her faculties been at 100% ."We should talk to him."

"Totes." Dean said in agreement. Those purple nurples, they tasted like shit but they were strong as fuck.

Jo and Dean approached the table of Castiel's coworkers, who were doing a pretty good real life reenactment of those peer pressure gangs in every D.A.R.E. video ever. Castiel sat in the middle of a booth, while everyone around him shoved various alcoholic drinks in his direction.

Castiel smiled confusedly at his coworkers. Gabriel was on his left and had bought him 2 shots already. He was about 7 drinks in and drunker than he'd ever been in his life. Every time he said anything everyone around him would roar with laughter, and Castiel would laugh along in a confused attempt at camaraderie, even though he wasn't entirely sure what was going on.

"Here Novak." Gabe said, pushing an umbrella'd drink in a small plastic cup over to his plastered coworker. "Try that one. It's a Malibu and Sprite."

Castiel looked at it dubiously, but took a sip.

"This tastes… like a Barbie." Castiel said at the sickly sweet beverage, imagining his daughter's toy. "NO!" He protested vehemently, once everyone around him started cracking up. He shook his finger at them scoldingly, and they egged him on. "No. Like…" he thought really hard for a minute. "Like sunscreen." He nodded solemnly. "This tastes like sunscreen." Then he took another slug.

"Hey Castiel!" Dean Winchester waved from across the table. "Cas!"

"You!" Castiel said, with some surprise and more pointing. For some reason alcohol made him point at everything. The man waving at him was familiar for some reason. "Handsome mechanic guy!" Castiel said, and he meant it seriously although again, everyone around him started to guffaw.

Dean shrugged. That'd do.

"This is the girl who's mom you almost killed!" Dean cheerfully shouted over the dull roar of the bar and the obnoxiously pounding bass beats. He gestured to Jo, who smiled and waved.

"Oh my god." Castiel said, expression darkening to a look of absolute terror and concern. He finished his Barbie drink in one gulp. "I'm so sorry!"

"Hold on," The dark suited man with an English accent who had shouted earlier somehow managed to slide out of the booth and step up into Jo's general vicinity. "Are you the victim of my employee's dumbfuckery?"

"Nope, her mom was." Dean said, sort of flushing, "And it wasn't dumb, everybody makes mistakes…"

"I cannot apologize enough." Crowley said, sipping his own scotch and looking with some approval at Jo's. He tilted his head toward Castiel. "I should have known not to allow him to operate heavy machinery."

Castiel was looking up at the disco ball above them as though it was giving him a message from God.

"I'm soooo sorry." He slurred.

Jo just laughed.

"It's all good, thanks for paying and stuff!" Jo said, waving a dismissive hand at Castiel and eying her new companion with some amusement.

"I'M VERY DRUNK." Castiel announced, as if this wasn't obvious. Everyone around him bellowed with laughter. Dean eyed the suit wearers critically. He'd bullied enough guys in high school to know the difference between some guys having a good time and a bunch of hyenas circling a baby zebra. In particular the blonde guy next to Castiel didn't seem to have his well-being in mind.

"Yo, Cas, let me buy you a drink, ok?" Dean said, reaching his arm out over the table to where Castiel was sitting.

"Everyone's been buying me drinks!" Cas said happily.

"Yeah, I think I got that." Dean sort of glared at everyone surrounding Cas, who were all suddenly very possessive of their little office mate.

"It's cause we love you Novak!" the sort of weaselly looking blonde guy said putting an arm around him and giving Dean an annoyed glare.

"Dude, just come with me, I think you need a break." Dean said.

"Really?" Cas said, but he started to shift away from the people around him and grabbed Dean's hand from across the table. Dean felt solid and reassuring. Castiel stood up and everything that he'd drunk throughout the evening hit him even harder. He swayed slightly, but Dean's hand kept him steady. "I'm going to go with Dean for a minute." Castiel said, remembering the handsome mechanic's actual name, miraculously.

"No." Said Gabriel, sitting staunchly and not moving. On Cas's other side Michael laughed and stayed seated as well.

"Sorry bro, not moving."

"C'mon dudes." Dean said, looking at each of the guys in irritation.

But Cas had a solution. Quickly and gracelessly, he slid off of his seat and below the table in front of him on to the sticky floor. He wiggled and crawled out to the other side where Dean was standing. Everyone began to laugh uproariously again.

"HOLY SHIT NOVAK!" Michael grinned. "We literally drank you UNDER THE TABLE."

While everybody laughed (and Jo began what looked like a very interesting conversation with Crowley) Dean put his arm around Castiel's shoulders and led him out to the patio of the bar.

"Ignore those dicks, man." Dean said.

It was kind of a chilly night, so very few people were out on the patio, and apart from two college aged girls who were smoking cigarettes and clearly in conversation with each other, Cas and Dean were on their own. It wasn't the nicest of patios, just a few dingy picnic tables on some terra cotta cobblestones, but compared to the loud and hot atmosphere inside Dean felt much more comfortable. Say what you will about the ABC Taproom, it had never hosted a single bachelorette party, and smoke machines were absolutely out of the question. He took a deep breath of the cool night air and looked over at his companion.

The change in temperature didn't seem to be doing much for Cas, who appeared to have lost the ability to hold himself up. With a graceless wobble he sank down into one of the picnic tables.

"Oh God." He said, putting his head down on the dirty table with a groan. "It feels so much better out here."

"Yeah, I thought it might." Dean said, taking a seat next to Cas. He was still drunk, and there was a residual sweet sickness in his mouth from the purple nurples. "How you doing man?"

"I think this is what people call 'hitting bottom'" Castiel said.

"Psssh no." Dean replied, patting Cas on the back. "You'll get this shit figured out dude."

Castiel sat silently for a few seconds, face still buried in the picnic table. Dean awkwardly patted him on the back again, not sure what to do.

"I'm not going to cry. Don't worry." Castiel reassured Dean.

"Oh! Good, I guess." Dean said. For a few more seconds the two of them sat side by side, Dean pleasantly drunk, Cas miserably so. "So. Those guys inside," Dean continued. "You work with them?"

"Yeah. I don't drink with them ever, but I thought tonight I would drink with them."

"Well, you sure did."

"Am I being embarrassing?" Castiel asked, finally looking up from the table.

"No dude, you're being drunk. Everybody's like this when they're drunk." Dean noticed something when he looked at Castiel's hand. Where there had been a wedding ring, there was suddenly just a very obvious tan-line. He shifted away from Cas, raising a disappointed eyebrow. "You planning on hooking up tonight?" Dean asked reproachfully.

"What?" Castiel's voice was suddenly very soft and his eyes were very wide. He looked at Dean in absolute terror.

"Your ring finger. You lose your wife in the past three days?" Dean shook his head in disappointment and took another swig of his beverage. The strange but well-meaning Castiel Novak he thought he'd got to know a little bit was turning out to be just another cheating dick. Castiel took a long look at his hand, and then dropped his head down on to the picnic table again. He looked utterly defeated.

"She lost me." Castiel muttered. "Or… left. Left is more accurate."

Dean froze, looking up from his beverage at what remained of his companion.

"Holy shit dude." Dean said. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't…"

"It's ok." Cas groaned, picking his head up from the table too quickly and feeling an unpleasant woozy rush. It was like every time he tried to move, his body responded a half second after it was supposed to. He cradled his head in his hands and then pointed at his face. "It's my fault."

Dean shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He needed to deal with the guy seated next to him. This was some serious shit. Novak was hunched in his seat looking haggard and miserable. There was something about his misery that was kind of attractive though, Dean noticed tipsily. His eyes were just the most startling shade of blue.

"You want a hug?" Dean asked.

"What?" Castiel responded looking confused again.

"I just like…" Dean couldn't articulate what he was thinking, so he just shrugged and said, "c'mere."

And with that he reached over and hugged the guy next to him in what he hoped was a manly fashion. Castiel tensed up completely, not moving for the entire length of time that the hug lasted. When Dean finally pulled back and took another sip of his drink, Castiel was sitting with his eyes wide.

"You are an interesting mechanic." Castiel noted with interest.

"Full service, boo." Dean shrugged.

The oven in Sam and Dean Winchester's tiny ass apartment was embarrassingly small. Next to Sam, who was still sweaty from his morning run and was cooking his oatmeal for breakfast, the thing looked like an Easy Bake oven. Jessica often pointed out that the apartment Sam shared with his brother was most definitely not a grown-up apartment. Even aside from the fact that he lived with his brother as a grown man (which was totally weird), she felt like she was dating an undergrad when she came to his place. Sam was never really able to put into words why his relationship with his brother demanded cohabitation, and on nights like last night when Dean had rolled in at about 4:30am being really loud and drunk it was almost impossible.

He hadn't moved out yet though. And even Jessica could see that he probably wasn't going to any time soon.

Sam was humming while he stirred his oatmeal, feeling kind of proud that he'd managed to get the oats to just the right consistency that he liked. No instant oatmeal for him! He was going to be heart healthy to the MAX. From behind him he heard their floor creak to announce the groggy entrance of his brother to the kitchen. Sam glanced down at his watch.

"9AM? Dude, you're so going to pass out in like 10 minutes." Sam muttered, with a grin.

"I certainly hope not." A deep gravelly voice which was very much NOT Dean Winchester's responded.

Sam turned abruptly to take a look at the intruder. He was faced with a scruffy looking dude dressed in an undershirt and khakis, standing strangely still and rubbing his eyes.

"Who…" Sam paused for a second, not sure whether he should punch the guy out or ask more questions. "What are you doing in my house?"

The man looked around the tiny kitchen with honest confusion. "This is an apartment, isn't it?" He asked, unhelpfully.

"Dude, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Sam repeated, at greater volume.

"Dean… Dean took me here." The man said, head tilting to the side. It was true, Dean and Cas had stayed out until Cas had sobered up enough to walk, and then Dean had insisted on letting him sleep on his couch. It had seemed like a reasonable suggestion at the time. He eyed Sam with sudden interest. "Are you… Dean's boyfriend?"

"What? No!" Sam was completely flustered. Oddly, that wasn't even the first time he had been asked that. Their landlady still didn't seem to be totally convinced that he and Dean were brothers, he could tell from the way she side-eyed them whenever they walked past her office.

Thankfully at this point Dean made his entrance, clad in pajama bottoms and nothing else. The gel which had so artfully formed his hairdo last night had turned his bedhead into something both terrifying and magnificent. His face was pale and sweaty and he looked like some water and aspirin might be necessary before he would be capable of human speech. Startlingly, he spoke.

"Castiel, this is Sam, my brother who I live with. Sam, this is Cas, his wife left him and he's sad so I got shitfaced with him last night and let him sleep here. Also, I threw up in my dresser drawer so I need to borrow a t-shirt."

"Dean." Sam sighed in exasperation. "Gross."

"Excuse me." Castiel interjected politely, "But I think your food is burning."

"Nooo!" Sam turned to look at his now smoking oatmeal, which had cooked past its perfect consistency and into inedibility. "DAMN IT, DEAN." He growled.

Dean grabbed Cas's elbow and the two of them made a hasty exit.


	4. Chapter 4

Ellen Harvelle was dust mopping the floor of her bar at 10am on a Saturday morning in preparation for the evening's rush when she heard a rapping on the window. Outside stood a pale and ill looking and yet still somehow cocky Dean Winchester, accompanied by a slightly smaller brown haired man who squinted through the window somberly. The neon "OPEN" sign was distinctly unlit, but Dean had apparently decided to ignore that from the cheerful wave he gave her. Ellen gave him a skeptical look before she took her time heading over to the door, opening its numerous latches and locks pointedly.

"Um, hey Dean." She began, leaning against the door-frame. "You realize we only do brunch on Sundays right?"

"You guys do brunch!?" Dean responded in honest surprise. "What have I been doing every Sunday my entire life?"

"I don't know Dean. Probably nothing worthwhile. What are you doing here?" Ellen asked with a sigh.

"So Ellen," Dean cleared his throat and gestured to his friend, "this is Cas, he hit you in his car."

Cas nodded very seriously.

"I am very sorry for that." He said.

"Oh!" Ellen took in the guy in front of her. He looked very earnest and friendly, even though he was visibly hung over. She remembered him looking like a lot more of a dick after the accident. Of course, she had been slightly hysterical and he had just pulled out in front of her car. When you're wearing a neck brace everybody seems like an asshole. "Well uh, all's well that ends well right?" Ellen held out her hand for him to shake. He stared at it for a second as though he thought it might be a trap or something. With a nudge from Dean he took the extended hand; his grip was firm for such a slight little guy.

"Dean told me that you were excellent, and that I should meet you." Castiel said. Dean cringed and glared at Cas, shaking his head in irritation.

"You don't just say that shit to people Cas." He said, and Castiel looked at him in confusion. Ellen just looked smugly at him, so Dean had to kind of shrug and admit, "Ok, so, you are pretty excellent."

"I know" She responded. "You boys can come on in." she started to lead the way into the yet unopened bar. "You," She nodded in Cas's direction, "Look sick as a dog. Hangover?"

"Um. Yes." Castiel admitted, sheepishly entering the dimly lit and very wood paneled bar.

"I'll make you a bloody mary." Ellen nodded. "Perk you right up."

Castiel looked confused. "I did not imagine that more alcohol might cure the effects of too much alcohol." Castiel responded.

"It's one of life's mysteries, Cas." Dean said with a smile.

Cas looked up a Dean thoughtfully for about a second, until suddenly his eyes widened in surprise and dismay. All the color drained from his face and his head woozily dropped forward. "I… I feel very bad."

"Bathroom. Now. Throw up and feel better." Dean said, shoving Castiel in the correct direction. Ellen sighed as Castiel ran in. She'd just cleaned that restroom. Dean walked over to the bar and took a seat, laughing to himself.

"It's like taking care of little kid! He'd never been drunk before last night, can you believe that? All of college! No booze!"

Ellen pulled out a can of tomato juice and gave Dean a cautionary look.

"Dude, no." Dean reassured his quietly judgmental companion. "I didn't get him drunk, I found him like that."

"Dean," Ellen leaned over the bar and whispered cautiously. Not that it was necessary judging from the unpleasant retching sounds coming from the restroom. "Did you fuck the guy who almost killed me?"

"WHAT!? NO!" Dean leaned back in his seat, visibly offended. "He's married!" Dean said, "And I'm… straight?"

"Dean, if you think you can tell Jo anything and not have it get back to me you're a bigger fool than I thought." Ellen chided.

"Oh. Ok." Dean muttered, looking somewhat bashfully at the ground. "I didn't have sex with him though, we just shared a cab to my place because he was too sad to go home. He slept on the couch. And he's straight, so… yeah."

Castiel walked out of the bathroom looking like the world was full of unspeakable horrors.

"You like shrimp, hon?" Ellen asked soothingly.

"I… don't… think so?" Castiel said, growing slightly greener.

"Well I put them in your bloody mary so you're going to have to get used to it." Ellen said with a shrug, finishing her garnish with shrimp, cheese, and a ton of olives. Dean drooled at the sight of it. Castiel stared at it like it was about to come to life and kill him.

"Enjoy." Ellen said, then leaned over to look Castiel in the eye. "I got your check by the way. Thanks."

"It was my fault." Castiel said. "No thanks necessary." He pulled the huge red beverage closer to him. "Is this, a meal?"

"The way I make 'em it is." Ellen smiled. "Now sit there and enjoy while I clean the place up. Dean, grab a broom."

Dean rolled his eyes and got up off the stool, patting Cas on the back as he left. Castiel took a tentative sip of the drink, and was surprised to find it salty, spicy, and absolutely what he needed.

Everybody at Castiel's work was suddenly super weird around him after their night of debauchery. They'd all been so friendly and cheerful when they were buying him drink after drink but that was friggin' GONE come Monday. Castiel just put his head down and did his job as best he could, letting everyone around him pretend he didn't exist.

Castiel moved out of his house and into a hotel room over the span of a few days. Amelia and Claire had moved in so that she could catch her usual bus to school and things could return to some kind of normalcy. Amelia had gotten a job, her first since she and Castiel had gotten married. She was going to actually use her accounting degree and work as the treasurer for Claire's school system. She had told him about it when their paths had crossed during the move-out process. It was the happiest he'd seen her since she told him that she had found a Christian sexual counselor for them to see a few months before the break up.

Claire still didn't know why her daddy wasn't around. Amelia had told her that Castiel was really busy at work and had been on a few business trips.

"I can tell she's starting to figure something out though." Cas explained from a folding chair next to the vending machine at Bobby's Car Care. Dean Winchester looked up from the car he was working on with a sympathetic expression. Unlike all of Castiel's coworkers, Dean Winchester had emerged from Castiel's drunken night with no judgment at all. He'd actually called Cas afterwards just to check in and see how he was doing. Eventually Cas had started stopping by the car care after work just to chat, and at this point Dean just left a chair out for him.

"I'm going to have to tell her at some point. I'm not very good at lying."

"I kind of noticed that, bro." Dean said with a smile, but Castiel simply nodded at the observation.

He looked down at the ginger ale he was holding. "I just don't know if I can handle this."

"Castiel, it's gonna suck, no matter what." Dean said, standing up from the car he was working on and giving Castiel his whole attention. "You're going to have to talk to Amelia about how to do it, since she's the one who, you know, left. It kind of should be her job."

"You'd like Amelia." Castiel said, making eye contact with Dean and smiling just a tiny bit. "She's very to the point. Like you."

Dean shrugged and then ducked out of sight again to work on the car some more. He hadn't asked Castiel about why he was getting a divorce and he had didn't plan to. Cas would tell him when he was ready. Sam had asked him a few times why he was spending so much time with this guy, and Dean hadn't really been able to give a good answer. He just liked him. He felt like the dude needed some help, and Dean could do that. That was something he could do.

"I'm sure Amelia's great." He said. "But dwelling on that is not going to help you all that much right now, you know?"

Castiel watched Dean as he worked on the car. He was dressed in a gray t-shirt which was covered with grease marks and his jeans had holes in the knees and fit like he'd been wearing them for years. Stripped of his usual layers, Dean's broad shoulders and muscled torso was more visible, not to mention his tanned, manly arms. Castiel shook his head and looked away again, hating himself.

"Is my car finished?" Castiel asked, feeling too shamed to speak any more about his wife and daughter.

"There's one more part we're waiting on, but I swear it'll be ready in like, three days." Dean wiped his hands with an oily rag. "Is your dick boss giving you trouble?"

"All of them are, yes." Castiel said. "Our chain of command is very… complicated."

"You should quit that friggin' job, it's just making everything worse."

"I don't think that having a steady source of income is making everything WORSE, exactly." Castiel responded.

"Dude, was that sarcasm?!" Dean looked up with a smile. "You can't just start using sarcasm out of the blue without warning anybody!"

Castiel couldn't help but smile in response.

"I have been spending time with the wrong people." He said, softly.

"NOOO I ruined you!" Dean laughed. "I RUIN EVERYTHING."

Trying to study for law school in the apartment was always a futile effort for Sam Winchester because either Dean was playing AC/DC really loud or he would be distracted by the internet. Generally he'd go to the library and bury himself in piles of books for hours at a time, but every once in a while the little partitioned study desks with their one grim little lamp and electrical socket started to feel like a prison, and then Sam would escape to his park.

It wasn't a particularly nice park, it was very small and there was always a bunch of trash and cigarette butts on the ground from the teenagers who used it as their late night hang-out spot, but there was sunshine through the trees and some nice picnic tables, and Sam found that he could get a lot of reading done there. Plus on some days, like this one, Jess would join him with a bag of popcorn and some reading of her own to do, and they'd just sit outdoors enjoying each other's company.

After about a half-hour of hard studying, Jess looked up from her history text groggily.

"I think I've read the same paragraph about 8 times, and it's making less and less sense." She muttered.

"Mm?" Sam looked up with a smile. Jess's forehead was greasy and she had bags under her eyes. She was dressed in sweats, and was eating handfuls of popcorn with a particularly mopey expression. As always, he felt a happy glow when he looked at her. He was the luckiest.

"Hey want to go out tonight?" Jess suggested. "I feel like dancing."

"But… I thought we were going to order food from that Thai place and stay in tonight?". He had kind of been looking forward to making out with Pride and Prejudice on in the background, not that he'd ever say that in a million years. "Plus Dean's gone tonight! He and Castiel went to a baseball game."

Jess leaned across the table and looked at Sam earnestly.

"Sam, I just bought this totally hot little dress that I want to show off. And as much as I love you, we've had Thai food and a movie for three weekends in a row." She smiled flirtatiously. "I want to make some people jealous."

Sam looked at his totally hot blonde girlfriend and smiled back.

"What bar?" He asked enthusiastically.

Jess grinned and started to mentally run through their options. "How about that place Dean likes?" She suggested, "ABC Taproom?"

"Pfft…" Sam made a skeptical face ad then started laughing. "I think you're confused there Jess."

"Am I?" Jess laughed with her boyfriend. She was bad with names sometimes, although she hated when Sam teased her about it. Once she'd flubbed something up and Sam had made a blonde joke. She hadn't called him for almost two weeks. After a lot of begging she told him she'd talk to him if he baked her a cake from scratch that had "I KNOW YOU'RE SMART" written on it in frosting. He'd baked a pie instead, and she'd forgiven him.

She thought hard about the name of the bar she was thinking of. "No, I'm so not!" Jess protested. "I saw him walking out of it last night!"

"Ok," Sam had his smug face on. He held up a finger, "One: last night Dean was at Jo's house having 'we're not actually dating' sex." As Jess ate popcorn skeptically he raised another finger, "Two: ABC Taproom is a gay bar, there is no way Dean would go near it."

Laugh though he may, Sam could tell from the stubborn look on Jess's face that this was not actually the end of the discussion. It had become a thing now, she was going to have to prove she was right.

"No, it was ABC Taproom, I've seen Dean come out of it like twice when I'm waiting for the bus home. I stand by it every night and I think, 'Sam and I should go there if Dean likes it so much.' It's totally the ABC!"

"Ok…" Jess was telling the truth about the location of the bar anyway, the Taproom was right across from the bus stop that she used to get home. Plus she had a tendency of staying out at the library late enough to actually see him leave the place. "Are you _sure _it was Dean?" He asked, trying (and failing) to not sound patronizing.

"I'd recognize those bow-legs anywhere." Jess said confidently.

Sam sort of laughed. He shook his head. "Dean wouldn't go to a gay bar. He's too he-man macho for that."

Jo sort of smirked, "Well, he is going to a baseball game with a dude tonight." She meant it as a joke, but from the concern line forming on Sam's forehead Jess realized that she might have just hit a nerve.

"You really think it was him? Last night?" Sam said.

"I'm positive." Jess said, although she missed the joking cadence of their previous conversation.

"I'm gonna call Jo." Sam said.

Castiel's motel room was on the ground floor of a Comfort Inn. It would be comfortable if the somewhat dubious gentleman in the room next to his would stop blasting shitty music and having really loud enthusiastic sex every single night. And then there had been that night when Castiel had been woken up at 4am by a loud motorcycle screeching into the parking lot, driven by a man who then proceeded to try to beat Castiel's door down because he was too high to realize that the guy he wanted was next door. "IMA FUCK ALL YOU BITCHES" the man had shouted, pounding at the door wildly, "FUCK ALL YOU BITCHES!" Castiel had pulled his blankets up to his chin, shut his eyes and pretended he was back in his miserable suburban home. Eventually the cops came. It had not been pleasant.

Castiel was at the moment lying on his utterly unnecessary king size bed flipping through channels and trying not to be distracted by the thumping bass pounding through the thin walls. His life was not quite normal yet, but he felt better about the state of things in general. He'd spent the whole day wandering through various parks and playing jump rope with his daughter that day, and he'd spoken very civilly with Amelia. Dean had gone with him to a baseball game the day before, and both of them had gotten one of those little helmets filled with ice-cream just for the hell of it. His souvenir helmet was still sitting on the table by the television, brightening the room up.

His next-door neighbor was having a very loud conversation with a young woman who (Castiel had the impression) might have been paid to be present at the party. She was giggling pretty loudly about something that wasn't all that funny and it was very clear that the sexy times segment of the evening was being worked up to. Castiel turned the volume up on Antiques Roadshow. Rocking it out on a Saturday night.

It was one of those evenings though, where he just couldn't shut his mind off. Castiel looked at one of the professional gentlemen who was about to tell a middle aged Englishwoman that her family heirloom was in fact a total fake. He wasn't sure, of course, but he got a very strong vibe that about 80 percent of these antique dealers and art historians were homosexuals. They were probably happily partnered up with other homosexuals, too. Surely somebody who can gage the value of a piece of pottery from a glance was far too intelligent to sit alone in their basement watching porn and hating themselves while their wife sleeps upstairs, both of them miserable from sexual frustration. He sighed and settled further down into the bed. It was such an unnecessarily large bed, he could let it swallow him up if he wanted.

Fuck it. Castiel turned his lamp off and turned the television volume up, leaving him in almost complete darkness and sheltered from his neighbor's imminent sex noises. He leaned his head back into his pillows, closed his eyes, and turned his thoughts to the car ride home from the baseball game yesterday. Dean had been cheerful and a little sunburnt, laughing about how miserably their team had lost. There was something natural and cool about the way Dean held himself. What if, instead of scrambling out of the Impala as quickly as possible, Castiel had leaned across the emergency brake and whispered "thank you" into Dean's ear? He could see Dean's face in his mind, flushing slightly and turning his face close, very close, to Castiel's. "You're welcome." He would say, licking his full lips and taking a deep breath.

And Castiel wouldn't leave just yet, he'd sort of smile and stay where he was, until Dean would slowly, very slowly, lean forward and press his beautiful lips into Castiel's.

It was a silly fantasy, and almost childishly innocent, but Castiel could feel his heart beating faster at the thought of it. He took a deep breath and began to slide his pajama pants down.

Dean would be a great kisser, obviously, and he'd take charge of the situation right away. He'd crawl over the obnoxious space between the seats until he was straddling Castiel's lap, and since this was a fantasy this would take place with no awkward fumbling or pinching or crushing. Castiel would run his hands through the hair right at the base of Dean's neck, and it would feel like heaven. Dean would smile then, and say something like, "I've wanted this for a long time." Then his hands would run down Castiel's torso until he reached the zipper of his jeans.

Dean's hands would be strong and smooth and they'd know _exactly _what to do. Castiel was flushed now, stroking himself in a quick rhythm. God Dean was so fucking good looking. His arms were so tan and strong and he could just SEE them working open his pants. Castiel started to moan a little bit at the thought of Dean touching him the way he was touching himself, of opening his eyes and seeing beautiful green ones staring right back at him as he felt all of these things.

"Dean…" He muttered to his dark room. "Fuck… me…"

BANG BANG BANG

Cas gasped and jolted up in his bed at the sound of a loud knock on his door. Fuckity fuck shit no.

"HE IS NEXT DOOR." Castiel shouted, inwardly damning his fucking drug dealer neighbor to hell. "GO BOTHER HIM."

"Cas?" Came a deep voice, surprisingly clear through the door.

Oh no. Oh no it was worse.

"Cas, it's Dean. Can I come in, man?"


	5. Chapter 5

When Castiel opened the door to his motel room, he looked a little bit like a cat that had just fallen into a bathtub and then skittered across the floor away from it in a panic. He was leaning awkwardly against the doorway and for some reason was breathing heavily. Dean didn't give a fuck though, he was too mad to think, and he stormed into Castiel's little room without giving the state of his host a thought. The room was dim and apparently Castiel liked his Antique prices screamed at him because the TV was blaring at a ridiculous volume.

"I had a fight with Sam." Dean said, prowling around the room like a caged leopard. "That fucking douchebag."

"You…" Castiel still seemed a bit flustered, more than usual even. He hurriedly stepped back over to his giant bed and put a pillow in his lap, like they were at a slumber party or something. "…and Sam fought?"

"Yeah." Dean was so pissed off on the drive over he'd run like three stop signs, not something he usually did with his baby Impala.

He had walked into their apartment after a really long day of work, covered in grime and ready for a beer and a nap. Instead he'd found his brother sitting on the couch with a pizza and an attitude.

"Dean," He'd asked, with an expression that made him look like a really empathetic moose, "Are you and Castiel dating?"

And thus had begun possibly the pissiest fight of either Dean or Sam's lives. Dean was annoyed that Sam had even made that assumption, but then Sam had started throwing all this shit around like the fact that he'd talked to Jo and how it really sucked that he's been making her lie for him and that if he wanted to date dudes it was fine he should just be honest about it. Dean had countered that none of this was any of Sam's business and what right had he to interrogate Jo like this was some CIA shit? Things had escalated rapidly.

Dean glanced over at Castiel, who was sitting on his bed like a zen monk and looking super thoughtful and open. He couldn't tell Cas about the subject of the fight obviously. Actually, he had no idea why he'd chosen, of all places to drive here. It seemed silly once he looked at him.

"Can I crash here tonight dude?" Dean asked, "I can't go home, I don't want to deal with this shit."

For just a fraction of a second Castiel's face returned to the initial look of horror that he had had when he opened the door, but almost immediately it was replaced by a look of concern.

"Of course Dean." He moved the pillow off of his lap and began to crawl off of his bed.

"what are you doing?" Dean asked, raising a hand in protest, "You stay put. I'll just sleep on the couch."

"No Dean," Castiel shook his head and kept trying to stand up, "it's not a full couch it's a love seat. I'm shorter. I'll take it."

"Dude, Cas, no." Dean held his hand up and gave Castiel a threatening look until he stopped trying to climb out of the bed. "Look, it's a big bed, let's just share, ok?" He walked over to the bathroom so he could wash his face or something before he crashed. "I won't turn you, or anything." Dean muttered grumpily to himself. He splashed some water on his face.

"Turn me? Turn me what?" Castiel asked, leaning over so Dean could still see him through the open bathroom door, head tilting slightly.

"Oh, nothing, never mind dude." Dean looked at himself in the mirror, rubbing his eyes. He was still so pissed he was shaking a little bit. The last thing Sam had said to him before Dean had grabbed the keys to the Impala and stormed out had been "You could have just told me, man."

"No." Dean said to his reflection, shaking his head. He turned around and walked back out to face Cas, who was sitting on the bed unsuspectingly. "You know what? Full disclosure, I fuck dudes. Not all the time, just sometimes. But apparently I should just go around telling everybody that or else friggin' Sam will flip his motherfucking shit over it." Dean held his arms out, like 'come at me, bro!' Usually when Dean was this pissed off he'd go smash up a car or something, you know, productive. Screaming at a divorcee in a hotel bed was a new one for him.

Castiel flinched as he was shouted at, but his eyes widened and stayed wide after what Dean said sunk in.

"You're bisexual?" Castiel asked, suddenly staring very hard at the pattern on his cheap motel bedcover. This was unanticipated. Awkwardly, a pounding noise accompanied by some muffled groans through the wall announced that Castiel's neighbor had finally started his nightly loud fuck. Castiel flushed and glanced up quickly at Dean to see if he had noticed. From his expression of confusion, he had.

"Yeah, I guess I'm bi… is that guy serious?" Dean lowered his voice a little bit, and pointed at the wall, an uncertain smile creeping onto his face.

"The man in the room next to me is very vocal. I apologize." Castiel responded very coolly. The thunking got a little bit louder, as well as the over-exaggerated moans of a prostitute.

"Christ Cas, this is… this is pretty fucked up." Dean's hint of a smile gave way to a full one, and he buried his face in his hand, giggling to himself.

"I'm sorry." Castiel said. "This is uncomfortable." Castiel kind of wanted to return the conversation to Dean's sexuality, and he inwardly cursed his next door neighbor to all kinds of hells.

"No man, this is exactly what I imagined coming out would be like." He started to laugh a little bit harder, going from a giggle to the sort of wheezing laughter that shakes your whole body.

Castiel couldn't help but smile as well, although he wasn't entirely sure what was so funny. He liked Dean's laugh, the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners. It always made him seem so much less self-conscious.

"I'm gay." Castiel said, and the statement actually stunned himself into silence. He'd known it for years, but this was the first time he had ever said it out loud. The thumping from the neighboring room continued in a steady, awkward rhythm.

Dean had been laughing so hard that he had actually sunk down into a squatting position on the floor, but that made him look up.

"What?" He asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

"I, I haven't had intercourse with any men yet." Castiel said, fumbling a little bit over his words. This whole situation had moved past bizarre. "But I'm gay."

"What?" Dean repeated, stupidly. At that moment the woman in the room next to them shouted, "OH GOD" in a breathless moan and Dean was lost in a fit of laughter again. "I'm sorry!" He managed to gasp, looking up at Cas who was fiddling with the edge of the bed sheet. "Shit! Seriously?!" Dean asked again.

"It's why Amelia left me." Castiel said.

Dean managed to stop laughing after that. He looked at his friend with completely new eyes. The office schlub sitting up in bed sort of awkwardly, with whom he'd spending most of his free time the past several weeks, was actually gay. The thudding of the couple having sex in the next room softened slightly, and Dean was able to know it was there without giggling.

"I would never have guessed, dude." Dean said, sitting on the floor of the motel with an exhausted thud.

"I would never have guessed you were bisexual." Castiel said. Very softly he added, "hoped, maybe."

Dean's expression was completely serious now. He stared at the man in bed, remembering the way he had looked the very first time they had met. He'd been so miserable, sitting on that grass bank on the side of the road, cold blue eyes emphasized by the red blood smeared across his face. He'd looked so fragile at that second, like a raw nerve. The Castiel sitting across from him now looked vulnerable in a different way. He'd just laid everything out there for Dean. Nobody had ever done that before, not even Sam really.

Dean walked over to the bed and sat on it, right next to where Cas was sitting, still crosslegged under the covers. Castiel took a deep, shaky breath at Dean's proximity, and when his eyes met Dean's his pupils were completely blown out.

Fuck it.

Dean put his hand to the side of Castiel's face and kissed Cas firmly on the lips. Castiel kissed back immediately, opening his mouth and reaching his hand to the back of Dean's neck. Dean liked that, and he started to cradle Castiel's face and kiss him more deeply.

There were about 800 reasons that this was a bad idea, but once Castiel made a decision he fucking went for it. This was the first time he'd ever kissed a man, although he'd thought about it a lot. Finally he got why people always got so worked up about this. He started to unbutton Dean's shirt.

"Cas?" Dean asked, pulling back ever so slightly, "You s-"

He was going to ask whether or not Castiel was sure he wanted to do this, but he got distracted when Cas started licking his neck. He groaned and let Castiel run his hands up and down his side, coming to rest on his waist. He felt himself harden, and it became much more difficult to think clearly about this whole situation. How had this happened, exactly? Cas finished unbuttoning Dean's shirt and pushed it down over his shoulders. He was staring at Dean's tanned, well muscled torso like he couldn't quite believe it was real. Dean decided he didn't care how Cas had gone from cool friend to fuck-buddy and tore his shirt the rest of the way off. He pushed Cas down onto the bed, with enthusiasm.

Castiel lay there on the pillow, hair mussed and breathing heavily while Dean scrambled to take off his boots and his jeans. Cas was still in his PJs, as he had been the whole evening, and when Dean had disrobed to his satisfaction he straddled Cas's hips and removed Castiel's shirt, revealing his pale, slim but surprisingly toned torso. Castiel arched his back up into Dean and his pajama pants hid NOTHING, a fact which had been unfortunate earlier in the evening but at this point he didn't even care.

Dean looked down at Cas, lying between his legs looking sort of blissed out, miles away from his usually frigid self. Dean grinned a little. This was his area, this was what Dean was good at. He slowly moved down Castiel's body, starting at his neck and moving down until he was kissing his defined hipbones and looking up at Castiel's exhilarated expression with a knowing smile. He removed Castiel's pajama bottoms and started to rub Castiel's erection.

"D-Dean?" Castiel said, voice hitching.

"I got you." Dean said, "Don't worry, I got you."

Castiel had received oral sex before, of course. Amelia, bless her, had used it as one of the ways to try to spice up their sputtering sex life. But having Dean fucking Winchester go down on him was a whole different animal. For one thing, Dean was going at this like it was something he enjoyed, using his tongue and his hands in ways that Castiel had never even thought of.

Castiel came in an embarrassingly short amount of time.

Before he could come down enough to apologize for that though Dean had already embraced him and they were clinging to each other like this was perfection, like this was exactly where each of them was supposed to be. Castiel opened his eyes and looked directly at the beautiful, freckled face of Dean Winchester. He wanted to return the favor, but he wasn't sure if he quite knew what to do. He took Dean's erection in his hands, stroking it delicately at first, then more quickly. Dean shuddered with pleasure. His expression when he came was exactly what Cas hoped it would be, completely unselfconscious.

"Do you think that guy next door heard us?" Dean whispered, as they clung to each other in the dark.

"I don't think so." Castiel replied. "We weren't particularly loud."

"Damn." Dean muttered. "Next time, then." He kissed Castiel softly, and then went to go wash up.

When Dean woke up the next morning, naked and tangled in what he realized with some embarrassment was definitely the vast majority of the bedsheets, Castiel wasn't there.

He pulled himself up on the bed, looking around at the bleak motel room surroundings. There wasn't a whole lot of space in that room, and Cas was definitely not occupying any of it.

Dean started to sort of gather his clothes, and tried not to panic. He'd ditched people after sex before, he'd even been ditched by other people, it wasn't the end of the world. But he couldn't shake a sort of miserable, worried feeling when he walked over to wash his face in the sink. So Castiel knew that the morning would be awkward and had just decided to avoid it. Or he'd regretted everything that happened and was sobbing into his wife's lap right now. Or he was at work? No it's Sunday. A billion other less and less plausible ideas ran through his mind, and Dean couldn't shut his brain off.

Fortunately the door opened and there stood Castiel, in his usual trench coat get up, carrying a box of donut holes and two huge coffees.

"Good morning Dean." He announced, stepping into the room, placing the meal on the end table next to his little souvenir baseball helmet and removing his trench coat.

"Good morning!" Dean turned around and tried to look cool, like he hadn't just been having a little mental freak out. "Nice! Holes!" Dean said, and then cringed at the words he had just chosen.

Castiel smiled and pulled up the cheap office style rolly chair that was the only seat other than the bed in the entire room.

"So…" Dean started. "I feel like last night was kind of…" He was going to give Cas an out, say it was weird and that if he didn't feel comfortable or anything with what had happened that was perfectly normal, but he never got the chance.

"Dean, last night was absolutely perfect. Aside from the day my daughter was born, I'd say it was one of the best days of my life. Would you like this coffee?" He spoke coolly and calmly and he pushed the coffee forward with a well-meaning tilt of his head.

"I, uh, yeah." Dean walked over and took the coffee, then sat down on the bed. "You, don't regret anything at all?" He asked raising an anxious eyebrow.

"I do not." Castiel said, sipping his coffee and looking content. But after a moment his face clouded, "Do you?"

"NO!" Dean said, "Are you kidding me? Hell no! Last night was… I just thought, you know, still being married and stuff, you might think it was weird?"

"Dean, the only thing that would make last night less than perfect was if you had not enjoyed yourself. I liked it, and I want it to continue happening. I have no intention of making this weird." Never had Dean appreciated Castiel's inability to lie more than that moment.

"Then let's not be weird then!" Dean said, holding up his coffee cup for Cas to toast.

"Let's not." Castiel "clinked" the coffee cup with a smile.

And the two of them enjoyed their breakfast in comfortable intimacy, which, for Dean, was definitely a first.


	6. Chapter 6

Jo came back inside from her afternoon run to find a text message on her phone. It was from Dean, and all it said was "you are the worst beard ever. Seriously."

She rolled her eyes and texted back "I never asked to be your goddamn beard"

Dean responded almost immediately with "So Sam's pissed at me."

Jo decided to ramp up their communication method a few class levels. She called him.

"Sam's not mad that you like dudes is he?" Jo asked, pacing back and forth across her somewhat tiny room and taking drinks out of her water bottle. Her clothes were sweaty and sticking to her, but Dean took priority at this moment.

"No, I think he's just pissed I didn't tell him." Dean muttered. He was sitting on the back of his Impala in a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot, waiting for Castiel to finish ordering his burger.

"Well huh, I wonder who told you that you should've done that like forever ago." Jo said sarcastically.

"Mmm hmm I was looking for an apology here." Dean said.

"Look, Sam called and asked what I was up to the night before and I forgot that I was supposed to say I was boning you." Jo explained. She had, in fact, told Sam that the night before she had successfully named all the countries in Africa on Sporcle. It had been an exhilarating evening.

"How hard is that to remember?!" Dean griped.

"Well boning you was pretty forgettable to be honest." Jo smirked and gave Dean a little bit of time to smolder from that burn.

"Ha. Ha. None of this is changing the fact that Sam's pissed at me and I can't go back to my apartment."

"You know what Dean? You have to deal with it, You're a grown ass man." Jo set her feet in the exact same way her mother did when she was making an ultimatum like this. "You've got to deal with this like a grown ass man."

"What the hell Jo? You're like 16 years old." Dean scoffed, nodding at Castiel who was walking out of the Jack in the box with (for some reason) three bags of burgers.

"I'm like two years younger than you, you dork!" Jo growled, then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Talk to your fucking brother." She said, with decisiveness, and then hung up the phone.

Castiel stood there staring at Dean for a moment, holding his bags of burgers in silence while he waited for Dean to finish his phone call. Dean hung up with a shrug.

"Dude, I already got my burger." He said, eyeing the bags Castiel was carrying.

"I know." Castiel responded. "These are mine."

Crowley walked through the offices on the lookout for fresh meat. There was a new intern who hadn't quite figured out the phone system worked, and he'd been having almost too good of a time fucking with him the past several days, but he was ready for a new diversion.

"I'm sorry sir," Crowley heard a deep, raspy voice from a few cubicles over, "Yes I'm very sorry that the wiring caused a fire in your home. Yes, that is why we recalled that particular line, as you might remember me telling you."

Crowley smirked wickedly to himself. Novak. That dipshit had a few things coming to him today didn't he?

He swung into Castiel's eyeline above the cubicle and raised his eyebrow in a mischievous way.

"Novak." He said. "We need to talk. "

Castiel opened his eyes wide in acknowledgement of his boss's presence, but was still obviously speaking on the phone to a dissatisfied customer. Crowley decided to ignore this fact and keep right on talking.

"So we've taken a look at the car and we've decided that it just isn't worth keeping around."

That got Castiel's attention.

"Excuse me sir, I'm going to have to put you on hold." Castiel said to the customer. He paused for a second. "Yes, but the fire is not actually burning at this very moment, correct? Then you can probably hold."

Castiel pressed the hold button and put the receiver down.

"Could you repeat what you said?" Castiel asked.

"I said, we're scrapping the car you smashed and getting a new one."

"But…" Castiel looked a little flustered, "But you guys charged my insurance to have it fixed." It was true, he was pretty sure that it was illegal, but it was exactly what had happened.

"Yeah, but we changed our minds." Crowley gave a little shrug like "such are the mysteries of life."

Castiel turned back to his phone, the hold button flashing at him demandingly. He rapped his fingers on his desk while he looked at the couple of family photos that brightened up his grim little office cubicle.

"Soo…" Crowley continued, looking a little bit askance at the clearly peeved off Castiel. Normally this guy was so fun; whenever Crowley fucked with him he'd just sort of shrink in on himself like a primrose. "So considering it was your fault that we need a new car at all we're going to have to dock your pay for a while."

Castiel slowly turned his head, and when Crowley took a look at his face he almost didn't recognize the PR guy. His normally blank expression was suddenly focused, and almost intimidating. He was holding himself differently as well, instead of his slightly hunched and off center look his shoulders were set. His head tilt was less like a confused puppy and more like a bird of prey.

"No. That is unreasonable." Castiel said.

"Um, excuse me?" Crowley asked. He could play the dangerous game.

"My pay will not be docked. We will not buy a new car since the old one functions perfectly. And I have been working here years longer than is necessary for me to earn a promotion. I ought to be supervising this floor." Castiel said.

"Really?" Crowley asked, slowly and deliberately raising an eyebrow. It was a skill that years of snide cynicism had perfected. "I think you ought to speak to Raphael."

"Yes. I should." Castiel said, firmly.

About an hour and a half later Castiel practically skipped into the garage of Bobby's car care, hopping cheerfully around the slicks of oil and grease on the floor.

"Dean!" He announced proudly. "I got fired!"

Dean, who had gotten a text from Castiel about a half hour ago that said that he was going to be heading over to the car care in a bit, emerged from behind a Buick, wiping some grease from his hands and onto his jeans.

Castiel stopped for a second, eyes narrowing and head tilting as he examined Dean.

"Isn't it customary for you to wear a shirt?" He posited.

Dean grinned broadly, putting his thumbs through his belt loops and pretending that he wasn't posing super hard right then. He looked like something out of a calendar targeted towards sassy middle-aged women, or from the opening of a gay porn. Was it a cheap trick? Maybe. But that didn't change the fact that Castiel was staring at Dean's sculpted torso like somebody on the Atkins diet looks at a bagel.

"I dunno." He said. "You want me to put one on?"

Castiel just shook his head slowly whilst he continued staring.

"So, uh," Dean continued, shifting around a little bit to show off how awesome his abs were. "Sorry bro, what did you say?"

"Oh, um." Castiel sort of shook out of his trance. "Yes!" A bright smile lit up his entire face. "I got fired!"

"What?" Dean asked, stopping his posing for a second to be concerned.

"I told Raphael that I was tired of being bullied by my superiors, and he told me I could just pack up my things and leave, and I did!"

"Wow! Dude, is this… good?" Dean asked, walking over to Castiel to try to gage whether he should be high fiving this guy or rubbing his back consolingly.

"Probably this is bad, because I no longer have a form of income… but" Castiel kind of shrugged, "Amelia's got her old job back so Claire should be all right, and I…" Castiel looked up at Dean with blue eyes that looked clear and happy, "I don't have to do anything Crowley or Michael or Raphael or Uriel tells me to."

"I think that's a win dude." Dean said with another grin.

"May I kiss you?" Castiel asked, looking up into Dean's eyes earnestly. Dean, who had honestly never been asked that before, melted like fucking butter.

"Sure dude." He said, and leaned down ever so slightly for a kiss. Castiel pressed himself into his friend, mindless of the grease and oil that Dean certainly hadn't strategically placed to show off his arm muscles. What started out as a fairly innocent kiss started to heat up pretty quickly when Castiel unexpectedly nipped Dean's bottom lip and pretty soon he found himself pressed up against the side of somebody else's Buick with a pair of strong, masculine hands starting to undo his tie.

The sound of a throat clearing from the door caused Dean to turn with a jerk. Castiel made a little annoyed whimper, but that had to go unheeded after Dean made eye contact with Bobby Singer.

"Might I remind you, Dean, that as much as I coddle your ass, you are still my friggin' EMPLOYEE, and you are currently WORKING, at your PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT." Bobby said with an irritated sigh.

"I…" A thousand smart-ass comments ran through Dean's mind in the .5 seconds he stood there, hand still holding Cas's tie, but he squashed them all down and went with "I am really sorry."

"Get to friggin' work." Bobby said with an eye roll. "And put a damn shirt on!" He said with utter exasperation as he slammed open the jingly doors back into the office.

Dean looked back at his disheveled Castiel with the slightly embarrassed smile of a man who can't believe he just got away with that. Also, he had kind of expected Bobby to make a gay joke of some kind, considering the fact that he was shirtless and embracing a dude who was dressed like a less fashionable Don Draper.

"I should probably go then." Castiel said, in his usual monotone.

"Yeah, I guess." Dean replied, but Cas looked so sweet there that he couldn't help but give him one more peck before he let him go.

"Call me later Dean." Castiel said, and it was more of a command than a request. Dean was pretty sure he was going to fulfill it though.

Later that night Dean walked into his apartment, face set in an expression that he hoped said "I don't give a fuck". It was the first time he had set foot in it since the fight, and he had no idea what to expect. What he found was his little brother, sitting on the couch and playing X-box. He was so entranced in the game that he hadn't actually looked up when Dean walked in, and when he saw there was somebody standing there he jumped like three feet.

"Fuck!" He said, then looking at the screen again he groaned in frustration and dropped his controller. "You killed me!"

"If I could sell my soul to bring you back, I would." Dean pronounced sarcastically, and stepped into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

Sam left the controller on the ground and the screen asking whether or not he'd like to continue with the game, following his brother into the kitchen.

"Hey…" Sam kind of froze for a second, with an empathetic expression that belonged on the face of a child psychologist somewhere. "Um. Do you want to play X-box?" He asked, staying true to a long Winchester tradition of avoiding all talk of feelings. The first time the two of them had hugged had been after their dad died. Before that they had expressed fondness exclusively through wrestling and punches.

"I'm dating Castiel." Dean said, looking up from his assembly of a truly spectacular salami sandwich.

"That's… cool…" Sam said, shifting somewhat uncomfortably. "Nice to hear it from you and not Jo." No matter how hard he tried there was always some part of him that stayed eight years old whenever he talked to his big brother.

Dean rolled his eyes and put some Muenster cheese on his already glorious creation.

"Um, Jessica is on the LGBTQA group on campus, if you want to talk to her…" Sam said cautiously. Dean's brow darkened and he gave Sam a warning look. Sam felt a little bit of a shit-eating grin begin to form.

"I swear to God if you get all touchy feely with me about this I will rip your hippie hair out." Dean growled.

"Hippie? I'm gonna be a lawyer dude! That's probably the least hippie profession out there!" Sam teased, happy to be joking with his brother again. Life was so much more tedious when they were fighting.

"What game are you playing?" Dean asked nodding his head over towards the TV and spreading mustard on his toasted bread.

"Amnesia." Sam responded.

"What? Fuck that scary shit. Let's play Dead Island."

"How is Dead Island less scary than Amnesia?" Sam asked.

"In Dead Island you kill the monsters dude, you don't just wait around for them to kill you" Dean smiled at the finished product of his most excellent sandwich. "Let's go dude!"

Castiel stood outside his hotel room, eyeing his tiny car and the huge pile of things he needed to move into his new apartment with some wariness. There was probably some way that he could fit his full size mirror into his vehicle without it decapitating him when he pulled up to a red light, but for the life of him he couldn't think of it.

While he tried to spatially reason his way out of this mess a huge SUV pulled into the parking lot.

"CASTEEL!" A female voice called out from the monstrous vehicle, mispronouncing his name. Castiel turned to see who was failing to address him.

"It's CASTIEL Jo, Christ!" Dean Winchester corrected with irritation, waving from behind his friend out the window.

"Dean?" Castiel asked, craning to get a look inside the SUV, "What are you doing here?"

"You called and asked me to help move your stuff!" Dean said cheerfully, gesturing at his group of friends, "So I brought the gang!"

And it certainly seemed to be a gang. Out of the SUV scrambled Jo Harvelle who Castiel recognized (hazily) from his drunken night out, followed by Dean, Sam, and a blonde woman in a slightly distasteful Smurfs t-shirt that Castiel did not recognize.

"Jess is the only one of us who has a car big enough to like, move stuff." Sam said, gesturing to the blonde woman who (Cas gathered) was his girlfriend. "Except Dean but he doesn't use the Impala for stuff like this."

"She's not a workhorse, Sam, she is a thing of beauty." Dean explained.

"And I volunteered to help, and I have no idea why Jo is here." Sam continued.

"I heard you guys were going to IKEA and I really like their meatballs." Jo clarified with a smile.

"Oh." Castiel looked at the group in front of him. Dean was smiling sort of nervously, like he had presented those nearest and dearest to him for Castiel's approval and he hoped they weren't going to make an ass out of him. It was sweet.

He had forseen a lonely and stressful afternoon of moving his belongings into his new apartment, but it ended up being something of an adventure. First off they had gone to IKEA where he had been overwhelmed by the options but thanks to Sam and Jess's ridiculous amount of organizational skill he'd managed to get some reasonably priced functional furnishings. Jo had gotten meatballs and Dean had gotten chastised for putting his boots on a 3,000 dollar table. Castiel had found it endearing, but Sam had rolled his eyes at his older brother.

Next they'd driven to his apartment and started unloading things. His apartment was in an area occupied mostly by service workers and graduate students, and had a worrisome amount of wood paneling in it. He had to sign a paper before he moved in that said he understood the dangers of living in an apartment which may have lead paint, and pledge that he wouldn't chew on any windowsills.

So as far as grown-up apartments go it wasn't exactly the best. But he'd almost forgotten that while he watched Jess and Sam carry his bookshelves inside and help him put some art and pictures up to make the place feel homey. Dean and Jo had gotten into a half real half joke fight about how to put the bed together, and Castiel wasn't entirely sure they'd ever figured it all the way out.

"Dean's the only person in the world who can misinterpret instructions that are so clear they don't even need any words." Sam had muttered to Castiel as he handed him a beer, the sound of Jo and Dean snipping at one another drifting in from the other room.

Castiel had bought all of them pizza and they'd chilled out in his new "living room" eating it and trying to figure out how to get the cable to work.

After all the pizza was eaten Jess loaded Sam and Jo into the SUV and waved goodbye to Dean, who had decided after Cas held his hand on the couch after dinner that he was going to stay.

"Your friends are very nice." Castiel said to Dean, as they tore up the pizza boxes to throw away.

"They're a bunch of freaks." Dean said, but he smiled as he said it.

"I guess we all are." Castiel replied with a contented little smile. He continued to tidy up the kitchen, but was sidetracked when Dean stepped in close behind him and wrapped his arms around his chest.

"You doing ok?" Dean asked, kissing the side of Castiel's neck and smiling as he felt Cas lean back into him. Bobby or Sam would have been stunned to see such a cuddly expression from Dean, but he'd always been like this with people he dated. Dean actually expended a lot of effort hiding how affectionate he could be.

"I think I am." Castiel said, turning around and kissing Dean on the lips. "I actually think I am."

Dean smiled gently and pressed his lips into Castiel's again. He could feel Cas's arms wrapping around his waist and his normally stiff and frigid form melted into Dean's.

"You know, I'm kinda tired." Dean whispered in Castiel's ear. "I think I might turn in."

Castiel pulled back, his expression concerned.

"I'm not tired." He said matter-of-factly, "I'd much prefer to have sex."

"Yeah…" Dean sighed and rubbed his forehead, "That's kind of what I meant…" He looked up in a faux judgmental way but there was a hint of affection in it. "Way to be subtle dude."

"Oh." Castiel looked a little embarrassed, and Dean thought that was so cute he had to kiss it away.

"Screw subtlety." Dean whispered, stroking the front of Castiel's pants and making him gasp. "Let's fuck."

The two men scrambled into Castiel's small but functional bedroom and began undressing one another quickly and needily. Dean's arm got stuck in his shirt and after trying to shake it off unsuccessfully a few times a giggling Castiel ripped it off for him. Slightly embarrassed, Dean kissed Castiel roughly and pushed him down onto the bed.

"What do you want tonight?" He asked softly, kissing Castiel's neck while teasingly stroking his erection.

"I…" Castiel was flushed again, hair mussed, pupils dilated. He looked at Dean hungrily, like there was so much he wanted he couldn't put it into words. "I want you inside me." He said, and his already deep voice sounding even more deep and raspy.

"For real?" Dean asked stupidly, voice cracking.

"Yes." Castiel said. "For very real."

Dean's mouth curled up into a smile and his eyes lit up in anticipation. He gave Cas a quick kiss and then scrambled off of the bed to get a condom.

"I…" Castiel sat up on his elbows and stared while his very naked guest dug through his wallet. Cas gestured over to the bathroom door. "I bought lube." He said, flushing.

Dean raised an eyebrow, pulling the condom packet out of his wallet and flashing a smile that made Cas want to be fucked like NOW.

"Well look at you! Mr. prepared Boy Scout!" Dean teased.

Castiel narrowed his eyes. "That is an incredibly strange thing to say to a man you're about to penetrate." Castiel responded with a hint of reprimand in his tone.

Dean cracked up. "Jesus fuck Cas!" he managed to gasp, doubled over. "You just go ahead and say that shit don't you?"

Castiel gave Dean a very meaningful look.

"Get the lube out of my bathroom closet and fuck me right now." He said with a deep, commanding tone.

Dean felt a wash of arousal that kind of surprised him.

"Ok then." He said, and he grabbed the lube out of the bathroom in 10 seconds flat.

Dean put the condom on carefully, crawling over on top of Castiel to kiss him deeply and tenderly. "I get all tingly when you take control like that." He whispered with a grin into Castiel's ear. Castiel responded by giving his neck just the most delicate of bites.

"You've never done this before, right?" Dean asked, trying to control the rush of blood making him hard. Castiel shook his head, looking up at Dean with wide, needy eyes. "Ok," Dean whispered, "lie on your side."

Castiel complied and Dean began the sensitive process of getting a human body ready for anal sex. He inserted one finger first, going slow and using a lot of lube. His first time with a man had been fast and rough, and he had felt it for days. He wanted Castiel's first time to be a little more delicate. The dude had been through a lot. He needed a break. He pressed his finger inside, opening him up gently. He didn't find the prostate until he put the next finger in.

Castiel gasped and arched his back, and Dean knew he had a good thing there. He reached his arm around and began stroking Castiel's penis.

"You doing ok?" He whispered into Castiel's ear, kissing the back of his neck tenderly.

"Mm hmm' Castiel hummed in response. Dean lubed a third finger up and put it inside Castiel,.

"Right… there!" Cas muttered, feeling the flash of pleasure every time Dean's fingers rubbed the right spot. He felt hot and electric and a little bit nervous but it was a happy nervous. Whenever Dean stroked his erection he groaned involuntarily with pleasure.

"Cas, can I…" Dean's voice sounded thick with lust.

"YES Dean, GOD YES." Cas gave permission, and Dean kissed Cas's shoulders as he pressed himself inside Castiel.

At first it was almost too much, Castiel let out a little pained noise that Dean soothed with caresses and gentle, slow movements.

"You ok?" He whispered. He wanted to make sure because he was feeling pretty fucking good and he needed Cas to be right there with him.

"Yeah…" Cas panted.

And Dean started to move in a steady rhythm. Castiel saw sparks whenever his prostate was touched and once Dean got going that was pretty regular. He was so hard he ached, and, every time Dean touched him he felt like he was going to…

"Dean!" He managed to say before Dean's hands made him come and he was lost to his own pleasure.

Dean's rhythm sped up, started getting erratic as he got closer and closer to his own orgasm.

"Cas…" He groaned into the damp hair at the back of Castiel's neck.

Castiel hummed in response, moving his hips into Dean and that was all it took. Dean made incomprehensible noises of pleasure as he came in one final thrust.

And, in a beautifully timed finale, the slats that were meant to hold up the mattress abruptly fell from where they had been improperly placed earlier that day, dropping the lovers unceremoniously onto Castiel's bedroom floor with a THUNK.

"FUCKING… JO!" Dean growled, flustered and pissed, trying to untangle himself from the bedsheets to climb out of the broken bedframe.

Castiel just lay on the floor where he had been dropped laughing so hard he thought he might actually die.

"Fucking... I TOLD her that the frame wasn't right!" Dean muttered, embarrassed and naked and slightly disoriented.

"Ssshh babe." Castiel soothed, stroking the side of Dean's face and kissing some of the sting out of his bruised ego. "It's perfect. Everything is perfect." He gave a sleepy, contented grin. "Besides. All we really need is a mattress right?"

Castiel could hear Dean singing Bad Moon Rising in the shower. He smiled to himself and put the pot of coffee on. 11:30 was late for breakfast, in fact, he hadn't even slept that late in college very much, but that morning waking up with Dean Winchester taking up all of his blankets with one of his legs hooked over his own he had figured that that arrangement ought to last as long as possible. At this late hour he was dressed only his pajama bottoms, and he had no regrets. He hadn't had a chance to go to the store yet so he didn't have any breakfast food really, but he figured that coffee and triscuits ought to work until the two of them wandered out for food later.

The doorbell rang, and Castiel was startled at the unfamiliar noise. New place, he still had to get used to it. Figuring that it was his landlady with another form for him to sign, he opened it right away.

"Hi Daddy!" His daughter Claire greeted him cheerfully, looking cute and blonde and wearing a mismatched outfit she had obviously chosen herself. Behind her stood Amelia, looking patient but friendly.

"Hi! Honey!" Castiel looked at his daughter with a big smile, and up at his wife (still his wife, technically) with an expression of confusion.

"Oh, um," Amelia looked at Castiel's half dressed state apologetically, "I should have called I guess, I just thought that we'd stop by and give you some things."

Amelia held out the little wooden tongs that she used to take his bagel out of the toaster bashfully. "As a housewarming gift. You'll need these more than I will." She smiled at him gently.

"That's…" Castiel reached out for the tongs. "That's a very kind gesture."

"HEY CAS WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST?" Dean Winchester yelled cheerfully, but Castiel cringed at the sound. He watched as Amelia's face clouded over. In slow motion, it felt like to him, she leaned around the doorframe and looked directly at the tanned, muscly body of Dean Winchester, still wet from the shower and clad only in a towel.

"I… He's…" Castiel struggled to form coherent words as Amelia snatched Claire up into her arms protectively, the way she did when she saw a scary looking dog on the street.

"Claire, we've got to go." Amelia said, and she was already having trouble keeping her voice under control.

"Why?" Claire asked. "Bye Daddy?!" She called out as her mother, walking quickly, dragged her toward the car.

"AMELIA!" Castiel called out in a panicky voice. He glanced back at Dean and then back towards the retreating figure of his family. "He's… It's nothing!"

But his wife hadn't looked at him until she was shut away in her car, and her stare then contained nothing but cold hatred. She all but squealed out of his new driveway.

Dean had figured out what was going on a few seconds ago, and stood frozen in the doorway, all prior joviality lost. Cas slowly turned around, closing the door behind him slowly and deliberately. His expression was completely blank.

"Cas, I'm sorry, when did they…"

"They came by to drop off some things." Castiel said flatly, staring at the tongs in his hand.

"I didn't hear them…"

"Dean." Castiel looked up, and Dean was actually taken aback by the deadness that he saw in his eyes. "Dean, I need you to leave."

"Dude… it's ok…" Dean started to shift uncomfortably, this wasn't his fault after all, it was just bad luck.

"Get out." Castiel said, and in his already deep voice it sounded almost threatening.

Dean didn't take threats particularly well.

"Fine." He said shortly, and he swept back into the bedroom to get his things. He got dressed in a rush, pulling his t-shirt on over his wet hair and almost ripping it in his haste. He stomped out of the apartment with no thought of how he was going to get home without his car there, with only the intention of getting the hell out of this place.

After Cas slammed the door behind Dean he stared at the tongs in his hand for a good thirty seconds. Eventually he sank down on to the floor, putting his head between his knees and hands behind his neck, the way he had after the car accident. He had no idea what to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Welcome to the seventh and final chapter of Reckless Driving. I just want to thank everybody for reading, you've been very kind, and I've enjoyed writing this. I finished this up during the hurricane, but I tried to keep the angst to a minimum. Anyway, thanks again, and enjoy!**

The first phone call to Amelia had not gone particularly well.

"Well you move pretty quick huh? How long has it been?" Amelia had asked, voice cracking, "three weeks? Four weeks?"

"It's been 44 days." Castiel responded.

"Was he… around… before…?" Amelia could hardly ask the question.

"Of course not! I didn't even meet Dean until after you left."

For an excruciatingly long time Castiel just sat on his end of the phone, listening to the sound of his wife crying. He didn't know what to say, and so he said nothing, but he felt less and less forgivable every silent second. He couldn't even make an apologetic noise just then.

"I can't talk to you right now." Amelia managed to say, barely, between deep shaky breaths.

"He's, uh, a mechanic, he helped me after the accident." Castiel said, desperate for some kind of explanation that might make her not hate him.

"Ugh… NOT HELPING, CASTIEL." She growled. That came out easier. "Goodbye." She said, and hung up the phone with a click.

Dean sat on the floor of Jo's bedroom, throwing a bouncy ball against the wall with an irritated grimace. Jo sat her bed, seemingly engrossed in her laptop.

"So… you haven't talked to him since?" she asked, typing something.

"He's gonna have to call me." Dean said. "He already knows I'm in this for the long run, it's all up to him." He failed to catch the ball and muttered some obscenities as he crawled to grab it.

Jo looked up from her laptop with an expression of polite skepticism.

"Does he though? You guys were only together for like, a week."

"Dude." Dean looked at Jo like he couldn't believe she could disagree with his flawless logic. "We had like, a connection, you know? Like a deep, soulful ass spiritual connection."

"Okaaay…" Jo made a face that did not register absolute belief in what Dean was going through.

Dean went back to bouncing the ball against the wall but he kept getting distracted and failing to catch it, or throwing it way too hard and having it bounce way the hell away from him.

"I'm just saying it was probably really rough on him to have his wife and kid see you there." Jo said, dodging the ricocheting ball. "Remember how long it took you to tell Sam you fucked dudes? Oh wait! You never fucking told him! He had to find out from me!"

"So not related…" Dean scoffed.

"Um, _so_ related. Look, Sam's your super accepting brother and it was really hard on you to have him find out. This is Castiel's WIFE. By her very nature she cannot be ok with this."

Dean was staring really hard at the floor between his feet and jogging his leg.

"He said I was nothing." Dean said, and his voice sounded much more sad than he had anticipated.

Jo's expression softened for the first time since Dean had strutted in and begun huffing and puffing around her room in indignation.

"I'm sorry." Jo said. "You should still call him though."

"Pfft." Dean's defenses rose up just as quickly as they had been lowered and he started throwing the ball again. "He's gotta call me first."

"You Winchesters." Jo groaned, rolling her eyes and looking back at her computer. "are emotional idiots."

Dr. Kyle Loeb's Christian marriage counseling office was located in a brick building next to a French restaurant, and as such always smelled vaguely of roasted meats and melting butter. Amelia's subconscious had combined the pleasant aromas with the unpleasant emotional turmoil and she now associated delicious cooking with extreme anxiety. She thought about that bitterly, while taking in the scent of buttery potatoes wafting in through the window. Dr. Loeb, a handsome-ish man in his mid forties, just starting to go gray at the temples, was flipping through her file and giving her what he clearly thought was an open and sympathetic look.

"Amelia, as you know, I've always held very high hopes for you and Castiel." He began.

Amelia nodded. Dr. Loeb had always made it very clear in their individual sessions that it was the wife's job to keep the husband sexually interested. He'd given her suggestions for ways to spice things up in the bedroom, and she'd even, in a fit of desperation, gone on a diet. But no matter how svelte she made herself, and how many different types of seduction she'd tried, Castiel would only make that frightened rabbit face at her and flee to his study.

It had taken a while for her to realize that the failure might not be hers, and even longer to work up the courage to do something about it.

"But, if what you've told me is true," Dr. Loeb went on,

_ Of course it's true, I just told you! _She thought with irritation, but outwardly she just nodded politely. The scent of roast pork was making her mouth water and her eyes well up at the same time. This was just getting ridiculous.

"Then Castiel really has moved beyond my help." He shook his head. "But, hopefully, not the Lord's." He reached back behind him to where a stack of brochures was sitting on his desk and handed her one.

The cover was very appealing; a happy white man was standing on a beautiful green lawn in front of a very aesthetically pleasing historic house, holding hands with a blonde woman in a yellow sundress. It could have been a detergent ad.

In non-threatening typeface the brochure read, "HELP IS HERE."

Amelia looked up with some confusion,

"I'm sorry, I'm a little confused, you want me to have him committed?" She asked,

"Oh no!" Dr. Loeb laughed condescendingly and she laughed along as well, out of habit. "No, it's not an asylum, it's a retreat, through Exodus International."

"I don't think I'm interested in a marriage retreat." Amelia said, putting the brochure back on his desk. "I think we're past that point." She sighed, regretting her decision to come here. Dr. Loeb hadn't really helped her all that much when she was married to an emotionally distant and frigid man, and she didn't really think he'd help a lot now that she was separated from an openly gay man. It was just that she hadn't been able to make it through a single lunch hour at work without crying since the incident, and she felt if she didn't talk to somebody about it she was going to go insane.

"It's not a marriage retreat either, exactly." Dr Loeb said, and he smiled and nodded at her like she was a child and wouldn't be able to understand him unless he spoke in short sentences. "It's a program catered to your husband's condition."

"Condition?" She asked cautiously, feeling a nerve throb in her forehead as her brow tensed. "Hold on, is this one of those ex-gay camps?"

"That's, one way of putting it…" He laughed uncomfortably, "It's more of a spiritual, life changing experience than that. Trust me, if he loves you, it will work."

Amelia's jaw was clenched, and she looked at her Christian Marriage Counselor with an expression of utter incredulity.

"I… I have to go." She said, standing up from her seat and getting tangled in her jacket as she tried to put it on too quickly.

"That's a shame!" Dr. Loeb said, "Here, just take the brochure, give it a think."

Amelia took the brochure that he held out for her, staring at him like he had just handed her a dead cat. "Thanks for your time." She said, coldly, stuffing the brochure into her purse and leaving the office very quickly. Once she made her way out of the building and on to the sidewalk she paused, collecting herself. The French restaurant that had been tormenting her for the past 30 minutes was open for business, and she could see happy patrons enjoying their overpriced luncheon entrees. Straightening her hair, she walked into the restaurant purposefully. While Dr. Loeb met with his next couple in distress and her daughter learned about letters and numbers, Amelia Novak sat and ate an entire plate of poutine, alone.

Dean had fixed up the three cars on the lot that needed fixing, as well as about 4 other junkers that he'd just been playing around with. It was about three weeks of work that he'd finished in less than one week, and he was now staring at a Fiatt with a broken passenger's window frustratedly. The glass he needed to fix it hadn't arrived yet, and he was stymied.

He stood in the garage, debating whether he should go get a sandwich or do some unnecessary but satisfying tinkering on the Impala.

"Dean?" A deep, familiar voice greeted him from next to the soda machine. Sure enough, when he turned he saw the familiar, trench-coated figure of Castiel Novak, standing next to the chair that Dean had started leaving out for him a couple weeks ago.

"Cas!" Dean said, and his voice betrayed a gleeful excitement that he really didn't want to let show. "Hey, Cas." He repeated, hoping he sounded less like an excitable teen.

Castiel's expression was grim, as it so frequently was. Dean missed his look of quiet contentment, or the look of confused pleasure after they kissed.

"We need to talk."

Fuck. Shit. Fuckity fuck.

"Ok man." Dean leaned against the car. "Don't worry, I'm sure it's _nothing._" He emphasized the last word bitterly, but Castiel only tilted his head in confusion in that way that he had, and continued on.

"I haven't been able to get a hold of Amelia since last week." He said. "She keeps hanging up on me, and I haven't seen Claire in…" He looked flustered and dropped his gaze to the floor. "I haven't seen Claire since that day."

"Fuck, Cas, that's like, illegal." Dean said, actually concerned.

"If my actions are hurting Amelia this much, I think I'm going to have to stop." Castiel said, and he raised his eyes to meet Dean's. "I think we're going to have to not see each other anymore."

Dean, already in kind of an anxious state, felt like he'd just been punched in the stomach. Logically, it shouldn't hurt this much. Jo was right, they'd only been together for like a week. But he couldn't help but feel that this was one of the worst things that had ever happened to him, in a life of kind of shitty things happening to him.

"You do what you gotta do man." He managed, biting his tongue to keep his facial expressions in check.

"I just…" For a second Castiel looked all flustered and sweet, the way he had when he'd begged Dean to give his information to Ellen. "I just want you to know that I care about you Dean. Deeply. But I can't lose Claire. I just can't."

"I know man." Dean said, not able to make eye contact with Castiel anymore. He turned around like this was no big deal. "You'd better go." He said.

"Goodbye Dean." Castiel said. And when Dean looked up he was gone.

Claire Novak stared out the window of her mother's station wagon mopily.

"Is daddy dead?" She asked, out of nowhere.

"What!?" Amelia asked shrilly, anxiously side-eying her kid.

"Is daddy dead?" The six year old repeated.

"No! Of course not!" Amelia tried to pay attention to the road and clarify things for her daughter. "Me and Daddy are living apart from each other, you remember how I told you about that?"

Claire looked out the window thoughtfully. Every Wednesday her mother dropped her off at the library for a fairy tale reading, and in the stories that the lady read, it was usually bad news when the dad went away for a while. Generally he "went away" because he got eaten by a bear or got his head cut off by a woodsman or something. She was just trying to work stuff out.

"Can I see him?" She asked.

"Of course you can." Amelia exhaled. "How about this weekend?"

Claire thought about the little kids in all the fairy tales who got lost or never got to see their families or got kidnapped by witches and she started to tear up.

"He's dead!" She said, dramatically, "HE'S DEAD HE'S DEAD HE'S DEAD"

"CLAIRE NOVAK." Her mother's voice lowered into its dangerous pitch. Claire recognized that pitch. That was the tone her mother used before she got grabbed by the elbow and escorted out of the toy store. Claire hushed.

"Claire" Amelia continued. "Daddy is not dead. And he loves you SO SO much, it's just… uh, we're just having a fight right now."

"A fight?" Claire was intrigued. This sounded promising and interesting. Not as interesting as a dad who was eaten by a bear, but much less potentially life changing.

"Yes, your daddy…" Amelia looked at her daughter and pondered what to tell her. Her mother would most definitely condemn telling the truth in this situation. On the other hand, her mother's truth squashing tendencies had landed her in a miserable marriage with an emotionally distant man until he died of a heart attack 10 years ago. Her church friends would probably tell her not to tell the truth either, but half of them were cheating on their husbands and one of them was an alcoholic.

"Your daddy and I are fighting." She said.

"Like me and Jayde?" Claire asked, referencing her school friend. The week before Jayde had told Claire that her father was Justin Bieber's servant, which of course Claire knew was too awesome to actually be true. Since then things had been cool between them.

"Well, kind of." Amelia looked at the red light in front of her miserably. "Claire, you know how when boys and girls like each other they fall in love and get married?"

"Yes mom." Claire sighed, as though this was boring and obvious.

"Well, sometimes… sometimes, boys fall in love with boys. And girls fall in love with girls."

"Really?" Claire asked.

"Yes. You know Ellen Degeneres from tv? She is a girl who is married to a girl."

"Oh!" Claire tried to wrap her mind around this concept. "Well that's cool, because there's two dresses." She said.

"Ok!" Amelia kind of laughed nervously. She was pretty sure she was explaining this badly but she had gone too far to stop now. "Well, when your daddy and I got married, he thought he was a boy who liked girls. But he's not. He's a boy who likes boys."

"DADDY LIKES BOYS!?" Claire repeated, so loudly that Amelia was sure that every single car and passerby around them must have heard.

"Sshh! Babe! Yes! I guess. I guess daddy likes boys."

"And so you're fighting because he likes boys?"

Amelia wished that she hadn't used that phrase, it just made everything sound ridiculous.

"Not really. Look Claire," Amelia hushed her voice to conspiratorial tones. "You shouldn't tell anybody yet about this, ok? Because some people think its bad for boys to like boys and girls to like girls, especially at church."

"Why?"

"Because…" Amelia set her jaw. "They're mean. And stupid."

Amelia knew just how stupid and mean people could be. Her best friend at her very Christian private High School had been kicked out of it for coming out as a lesbian. It had been awful, her parents had told her she couldn't talk to her anymore, and the last she'd heard of her was that she'd been disowned and forced to leave her house. She could remember the service after it had all gone down, her pastor going on and on about real love being between a man and a woman. But all that Amelia saw in that situation was hate. She had vowed then and there that if she ever had a child who was gay she would accept and love her. She hadn't really thought about the situation if it was her husband.

"So daddy loves a boy?"

"Daddy loves an Abercrombie and Fitch model." Amelia muttered, mostly to herself. She could hear how petty she sounded though and she sighed. "But I left him because I want somebody who loves me, you know?"

"He doesn't love you?"

"Not in the way you love somebody you marry." Amelia sighed. "He still loves me though, just different. And he loves you like WHOA. He loves you SO MUCH." Amelia smiled and Claire giggled at her mom's silly voices. "You'll see him this weekend." Amelia promised with a nod. "I've just got to call him." She took a deep breath. "I've just got to call him."

But she didn't. Not right away at least. Some deep, stupid, instinctual need led her to seek out Castiel's mechanic Dean. She actually called Castiel's old bosses to figure out which autoshop had taken care of the car. At the end of her creepy stalkery detective work she found herself jingling her way through the door of Bobby's Car Care.

Nobody was at the desk, so she rang the bell.

"Hi can I help oh DEAR GOD." Dean Winchester froze in the door leading from the workshop to the office, recognizing the woman standing in front of the desk. Amelia Novak was blonde and slim, and her face would probably be attractive in less harsh lighting. Her expression was less hate filled than it had been when she drove off from Castiel's apartment, but still not particularly friendly.

"Hello Dean." Amelia said, extending her hand for him to shake. "I'm Amelia Novak, you're sleeping with my husband."

"Um." Dean extended his hand, anxiously smiling, "I guess Castiel wasn't lying about you being sort of 'to the point'"

"He can't lie." Amelia said, surprised at how calm she was feeling. "Have you ever seen him try to? It's almost cute, and kind of sad."

"Sorry, just," Dean looked at Amelia and shifted his feet, "I'm trying to get my bearings here, is this the part where you kill me with a sledgehammer?" Dean asked.

Amelia sort of laughed sadly, looking down at the floor, "I'm sorry Dean."

"Sorry because you're about to kill me with a sledgehammer?"

"No, I… I'm sorry that I freaked out at you. I left Castiel, I have no right to demand any kind of loyalty from him."

"That…" Dean had been working up to saying exactly that to her, so he was thrown for a bit of a loop. "Ok."

"I was just kind of upset because, you know, after 10 years…" She shook her head. "I thought maybe he'd take more than a month to find somebody… ugh, I keep sounding awful when I say it out loud!"

"I kind of look like a slut when you say it out loud." Dean said.

"You aren't a slut…" Amelia laughed. "Actually I don't know you might be a slut. THE POINT IS IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS." Amelia said emphatically and then tried to shut up.

"Um. Thanks?" Dean looked at Amelia, "But, we're not together anymore. Me and Cas, I mean. So you don't have to worry."

"What?" Amelia asked.

"He came by and ended things like three days ago." Dean had had a good power cry in his bedroom that night, and then had dedicated the next few days to doing everything he could to keep Cas out of his head. Including a very attractive woman named Chloe.

"Because of me?"

"He said he'd pick his daughter over me any day." Dean said with a sad kind of resigned look. "So congrats."

"That idiot." Amelia sighed. "I was never going to take Claire from him!"

"That is definitely not what he's thinking right now, let me tell you." Dean said.

"I'll call him. Right away. Anyway, it's good to meet you Dean." Amelia nodded and walked matter of factly out of Bobby's Car Care.

Dean sank down into his very professional duct taped office chair with a groan. Bobby walked into the office nonchalantly looking through some forms and Dean raised a cautionary hand to him.

"Never fuck a guy with kids." Dean advised. "Shit goes crazy."

Bobby narrowed his eyes at Dean, then shook his head like "I am too old for this…" and continued walking right out of the office.

Later that night Dean sat with his brother on their crummy little couch, drinking beer and playing the team version of Portal 2.

"FUCK those laser FUCKS to FUCKING FUCK!" Dean growled, watching as his little robot dude died for the 15th time. Sam laughed resignedly. He had kind of expected that he would be better than Dean at this game, but Dean's spatial logic was pretty on point. Sam could in all likelihood write up a pretty good legal case against the fictional company their characters were playing for, but that didn't really help them out of their predicament.

The doorbell rang.

"Is that Jess?" Dean asked, pulling himself up off the couch to get the door. Sam shrugged, making that noncommittal expression which Dean inwardly thought of as Sam's "sturgeon face".

"We didn't have plans." He said.

Dean opened the door and was faced with a very tense Castiel Novak.

"Hello Dean." Castiel said seriously. "We need to talk."

Castiel's eyes flicked back to where Sam was chilling on the couch. "Oh." He said, looking vaguely disappointed. "Sam."

"What's up?" Sam asked pleasantly.

"Please leave." Castiel told Sam in his usual deadpan, and then turned his strangely intent, piercing gaze back onto Dean.

Sam protested, looking to Dean for backup, "Dude, this is my apartment!"

"Just get out of here, Sam." Dean said, not breaking contact with Castiel's startling blue eyes. Sam sighed wearily, stood up off of the couch, flicked the TV off, and stepped around his brother and his brother's boyfriend who were still standing dramatically in the doorway.

"See you later…" he said softly, and he left the two of them to whatever the hell it was they were doing.

Dean adjusted himself in the doorway in an attempt to look nonchalant, which was difficult what with the intense staring happening right then.

"So I guess…" He was about to say something cool, like, "so Amelia found you huh?" but he never got the chance because all of a sudden Castiel pulled his face down into a rough, unexpected kiss. Dean let himself be kissed for probably a few seconds longer than was respectable before pulling back in justified indignation.

"What the hell Cas?!" He said, taking a few steps back. Castiel was left standing there, taking deep breaths, expression slightly worried.

"You aren't nothing, Dean." Castiel said.

And all of the angry things that Dean had been planning on saying, all of his suave postures, dissolved just like that. All of a sudden he just felt tired, and he could think of no reason why he shouldn't just pull Castiel into his arms and be done with it.

So that's what he did.

Later, in bed, Dean lay with his head on Castiel's chest, feeling the rise and fall of his deep breaths as they lay entwined with one another.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you." Castiel said.

"Shh…" Dean said, lifting his head and kissing Castiel's cheek. "You don't have to say all that crap. I already forgave you."

"No Dean." Castiel pulled back and looked at Dean seriously. "You don't even know how good you are."

"Ok…" Dean kind of flushed. "Isn't that a One Direction song or something?"

"What?" Castiel asked, unfamiliar with the reference.

"Never mind, keep complimenting me." Dean muttered, closing his eyes and letting Cas pull him into another hug.

"Amelia has no right to take you away from me." Castiel said. "I can be with you and still be a good dad."

"Oh." Dean looked up at Cas in confusion. "Didn't she call you?"

"What? No, I still haven't heard from her." Cas's face looked profoundly sad, but there was a touch of anger in it. "I've got to see Claire, this is insane."

"Dude, Cas, she talked to me." Dean sat up in bed a bit. "Amelia came to the Car Care. She said she's totally cool with you seeing Claire."

"What?" Castiel sat up abruptly. "She…"

"Check your phone dude."

Castiel pulled himself out of bed and picked his phone up out of his jeans.

"It's dead." He said, despairingly, looking up at Dean with an anxious expression.

"Don't worry bro." Dean said with a smile. "I have a charger."

Dean watched as Cas scrambled to plug his phone into the outlet and stared at it eagerly, as though willing it to power up more quickly.

"Hold up, Cas, so you didn't talk to Amelia before coming here?" He asked.

"Is that not obvious?" Castiel asked, and from his earnest face it was a legitimate question.

"But… why did you come?"

"I needed to see you." Castiel said, looking up from his phone to make direct eye contact with Dean. "Because I love you."

"Oh." Dean said softly, laying back in bed for a second to let that sink in.

Castiel's phone beeped and he looked at it with trepidation.

"I've missed three calls. One's from my sister… TWO ARE FROM AMELIA." Castiel looked up at Dean with such an enthusiastic smile that Dean couldn't help but laugh. Castiel put his password in wrong twice before he finally reached his voicemail.

"IT'S HER!" Castiel announced giddily. "She says I can see Claire this weekend! And something about Claire thinking I'm dead? Ok, I'm…" He paused for a second, listening. "She says that you seem ok, we're just going to have to give her some time to adjust."

"She seemed ok too." Dean said.

Castiel looked up at Dean with an expression of pure joy. Throwing his phone down he jumped back onto the bed, straddling Dean and kissing him enthusiastically.

"I love you Dean." He whispered, pressing his forehead into Dean's.

"I love you too, Cas." Dean responded, kissing Castiel tenderly. "Let's do this."

Claire Novak grinned evilly as she checked out her circle of companions, holding the black plastic ring from her Pretty Pretty Princess boardgame like the trump card it was. Jayde had the tiara right now, and you couldn't win Pretty Pretty Princess without the tiara, but as she didn't have hardly any of the other jewelry she posed no threat. No, Claire was a savvy enough princess to know exactly who deserved the black ring.

"NOOOO!" Dean Winchester cursed the pink ceiling of Claire's room with a melodramatic flair that made Claire cackle evilly as she handed him the accessory. He was decked out in blue earrings (BOTH), a necklace, a bracelet, and a ring, making him dangerously close to winning this thing.

"You can't be the Prettiest Princess with the black ring." Daddy pointed out from the doorway.

"Got that, Cas." Dean said, and Claire could tell he was really annoyed. Awesome.

"TOO BAD SO SAD!" She giggled.

"Claire!" Daddy admonished.

"Oh the game's not over yet." Dean said, narrowing his eyes and pointing his finger at Claire, flushed with determination. "BRING IT ON!"

A tap on Castiel's shoulder turned him around to face Amelia. She had a sort of bemused expression on her face as she watched Dean spin the dial and punch the air when he landed on Tiara.

"Wow, he's really getting into this isn't he?" She asked with some amusement.

"I did not foresee that happening." Castiel responded with a little half smile. "I thought he was simply humoring them."

Amelia smiled up at Castiel, looking vaguely tired.

"I…" Castiel began, looking at Amelia earnestly. "I wanted to thank you for being so good about this."

Amelia shrugged kind of sadly. "Hey, she knows you like boys, she might as well know which boy you like." She looked back at the board game to see Claire giggling like a madwoman after getting only one earring and putting it on her nose. Dean was giggling away as well, and his crown almost fell off. "I am kind of stunned at how good he is with kids." She noted.

"He's Dean." Castiel said happily. "He's good at everything."

"YESSSS!" Dean shouted. "TAKE THAT BLACK RING BACK, CLAIRE!"

"No!" The six year old blonde girl actually gasped. "You…"

"I WON!" Dean Winchester laughed, standing up. His triumphant visage framed by a sparkly Justin Bieber poster.

"You haven't won until you say it." Jayde pointed out, a stickler for rules apparently.

Dean turned to look at Cas, arms outstretched.

"I AM THE PRETTIEST PRINCESS." He announced.

"Congratulations. You beat two first grade girls at dress up." Castiel noted.

"Don't take this from me Cas." Dean pointed warningly, a broad smile creeping across his face. "I earned this."

"REMATCH!" Claire shouted.

"You're on!" Dean said, "But only if your daddy plays too." Dean grinned mischievously up at his boyfriend.

Castiel looked at Amelia cautiously, raising his eyebrows in a questioning way.

"Oh go ahead you big weirdos." Amelia said, rolling her eyes and making her way downstairs. Claire and Jayde laughed and clapped as Castiel sank down onto the floor next to the still bedazzled Dean. Dean squeezed Cas's hand quickly, winking at him when they made eye contact as the two little girls started resetting the board.

"You have to be green, daddy." Claire said. "It's the only one left cause it's the ugliest."

"How'd I do?" Dean whispered to Cas. "Am I in?"

"You are wonderful Dean." Castiel responded, taking off Dean's crown. "But your kingdom is about to fall to its rightful sovereign."

"Bring. It. On." Dean responded with a quick and wicked smile, and they started round two.


End file.
